In 1984, Klammer won the downhill at Kitzbhel (Hahnenkammrennen) a record fourth time, after three consecutive wins 1975-1977. We met in Tunisia, in Africa, on the beach, recalled Klammer. Klammer's 1:45.73 was more than thirty-two seconds faster. Chasing the Line presented new challenges he hadnt faced in producing Streif, which took viewers inside the minds of downhillers who threw themselves fearlessly into the Mausefalle. Their finish line embrace at Patscherkofel in 1976 was heartfelt and forged a bond between the two rivals each Olympic downhill champions. Franz Klammer - 1976 Olympic Downhill Gold Medal performance Rambo Nov 4, 2009 1 2 Next Nov 4, 2009 #1 Rambo Member Joined Sep 8, 2008 Messages 890 Points 16 Location Binghamton, NY Anybody remember this? Their story was truly one for the big screen. In fact, the course contributed to new technology in ski construction, ultimately leading to the parabolic shaped skis now used by most recreational skiers. Thanks for bringing that memory back. But Pepi Fischer wanted more. Franz Klammer and the 1976 Olympic Downhill [], Your email address will not be published. Fischer, who passed in 2020 at the age of 90, had been known as a hard-driving, innovative ski industry leader. And if youre a ski racing purist, yes, you may detect a bit of familiarity in the style of Klammer racing crazily down the piste. The project really came to us with a big burden, said Schmied, echoing Pochlatkos concerns. Challenge in hand, Pochlatko took the film concept to director and screenwriter Andreas Schmied of Samsara Filmproduktion. This one turn, in the lower part, it changed my entire life, said Klammer. Sunday, February 26 2023 Breaking News. Required fields are marked *. So he reached out to fellow Austrian filmmaker Gerald Salmina, producer of the 2014 film Streif: One Hell of a Ride, to manage second unit shooting at Patscherkofel last February. Schmied, now a principal in Samsara Filmproduction, had previously produced five feature films in Austria. The nickname became particularly apt after he survived his spectacular flight, several meters above the slope, and the post-landing cartwheels in soft snow. Finally he also skied a line in the final pitch which Im sure he never recognised. The Austrian set an impressive record of 62 victories and 115 podium finishes on the World Cup tour in only 175 competitions. Klammer, age 19, followed this up with a third at St. Moritz and a third in the giant slalom at Mont Sainte-Anne (the only time he finished on the podium in a World Cup Giant Slalom in his career). In bib no. At the finish line, Franz Klammer started by looking at the huge crowd. Today, Franz Klammer is a paid ambassador for several ski resorts and corporations. Franz Klammer recalls, By the time I walked into the starting gate, I knew I am going to win. Sep 26, 2013 - This is nearly the entire Franz Klammer Gold Medal Run from the Innsbruck Winter Olympics of 1976. His final World Cup race was in March 1985 at Aspen, Colorado. The legendary skier Franz Klammer. ^ Klammer was an alternate on the 1980 team and did not compete. NEW YORK - Pro Football Hall of Famer Frank Gifford has died. Two days after that frightening accident, he was facing the press to confirm his intention to race the following day in Super G. It was quite a flightfor sure not as comfortable as our journey over here with Lufthansa, he said with a grin. He knew what was necessary to show and not to over act. He was on the edge the entire trip down the hill, several times he looked like he was out of control and going to wreck. At the end of the race he was going so fast that you could see a difference from the previous skiers. It turned out that powerful skiers could exit the turns with amazing acceleration, a situation that caused some spectacular crashes. The story of a day like no other We would be right to consider him the greatest downhill skier of all time. While Klammers Olympic spot was fixed, his teammates were battling for start rights in training. Alberto Tomba won gold in slalom and GS at Calgary, then cheered from the side of the rink as Katarina Witt of East Germany claimed her second Olympic figure-skating title. Lineage: Original Scotch VHS 3Hr (1980) SP- Panasonic NVHS-960 SVHS (Gold edition - Mint) - SVIDEO lead - Canopus ADVC300 - Firewire - PC /w/ Sony Vegas with Neatvideo plugin - TMPGENC (Deint - 50fps mp4 3000bitrate) Youtube. The fear of many was that the remarkable success of the Austrian ski racer would get passed by over the generations. His greatest moment is certainly still his Olympic win in Innsbruck; however, his entire career remains a great source of inspiration for all the speed skiers that have followed. Franz Klammer - Free download as Text File (.txt), PDF File (.pdf) or read online for free. I always thought, I will never be able to find a woman who Im going to love, said Klammer, pausing to collect his thoughts. Klammer, the 1976 Olympic downhill gold medalist, said he had idolized Sailer, telling the Austria Press Agency, "As a small boy, I wanted to be just like him." Newsweek wrote in 1996 that. [1] He spent 13 seasons on the World Cup circuit, from December 1972 to March 1985. He was so eager to play the Franz Klammer and do it right.. So I won it.. He would also have to live with personal challenges. Kids watch Olympic curling for the first time Kids Call. She fought for her rights, yet lost focus and energy during the intense political battle. Franz Klammer won only one Olympic medal, but that was the one that mattered - at Innsbruck in 1976. The opportunity for Andreas Schmied, along with his wife Elisabeth, to write the screenplay for the Klammer story was both good fortune and a big challenge. Franz Klammer. Chasing the Line, it would have been easy to simply pull archival footage to build a documentary story. They start for the love of the sport. Their excitement is palpable. Hermann Maier. He just went down the straight line which normally everybody said its just impossible, you cant stand this. There were some hot meetings within the Austrian squad, but the other racers didnt want to miss their chance for an Olympic medal just a few hours before the start of the show. Sport Skiing Country Austria Born December 03, 1953 Joined academy 2000 A great career only becomes exceptional with the ultimate title an Olympic gold medal. His tiny village of Mooswald, north of Villach, was situated in the mountains but without a ski lift. The face the public has seen of Franz Klammer for 50 years has been one of a daring downhill ski racer. And so this was, for me, the spark that lit the project. We all just knew he was going to crash. But it was also complex. At the World Championships from 1954 through 1980, the combined was a "paper race" using the results of the three events (DH, GS, SL). What happened next was the creation of a legend. TRY A 1-YR INTRODUCTORY MEMBERSHIP IN ISHA! Klammer came into the 1976 Olympics with three straight World Cup downhill wins and back-to-back Hahnenkamm titles. The Swiss favorite came in third this time, behind Moser-Proell and silver medalist Hanni Wenzel, who took gold in slalom and GS. I remember the race we were in the living room watching on TV in black and white, said Salmina, who was 11 at the time. Unable to make the four-member Austrian downhill team for the 1980 Olympics, Klammer could not defend his Olympic title at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Wearing bib 1 and with nothing to lose, as he didnt belong to the circle of favorites, he achieved an aggressive yet controlled run and set a time that nobody could beat. Four years later, they met for dinner and a private ski lesson. Franz Klammer is an Austrian former Alpine ski racer known for dominating the Downhill skiing discipline. Franz Klammer was Sportsman of the Year in Austria three times: 1975, 1976 and 1983.. They met later that year in Italy during an exhibitionand then again four years later at Les Menuires, the site of the slalom race for the 1992 Albertville Games. And what are you doing? Im studying medicine. And that was all we talked about. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Suddenly there were 60,000 people in the stadium and the whole mountain began to shake. Klammer did not have classic ski technique, he came out of the gate fearlessly, right on the edge. First off, Patscherkofel was quite a placid downhill run compared to the Hahnenkamm. Schmied literally grew up with the Klammer legend. He was from Carinthia, the right age, almost the right build, he won a couple of ski races when he was a boy. His career total is 26 downhill wins: 25 World Cup and 1 Olympic. Im extremely happy. I thought, thats a fun thing just to make a film with one week from my life, he said. For Eva, they went with a young actress from Vienna, Valerie Huber. I thought, Franz is the most famous Carinthian and we should do something with him, said Kresse. Franz Klammer produced one of the most thrilling moments in alpine racing history with his reckless gold-medal run on the treacherous Patscherkofel downhill course at Innsbruck, Austria in February 1976. In skiing, its the Swiss Alps and the Austrian Alps that define the sport. This is where most biopics fail. As expected, Russi put down a solid run to take the lead. Franz everyone knows him!, In his heart, Kresse believed in the story. Bernhard and I, we are really close friends and appreciate each others company. So I decided to take even more risks.. Only a few months later, Franz told me how he managed to clinch that title after his fantastic run. But the most important week in my life! When I told my mother that Im doing this film, she said all these memories came up. They also needed to take what is now an intermediate recreational ski run and transform in into the rough and tumble 1976 downhill. Most of this was not known in 1976, when Franz Klammer had the weight of a nation on his shoulder as he embarked on his unforgettable journey down the slopes of Patscherkofel. In 1975 he had dominated the event in a fashion never seen before by winning 8 out of the nine downhill races of the season. Enter 22-year old Franz Klammer. So thats the thing, you know?, Last month the two met again at the Zurich Film Festival for a screening of. He answered that although his gold medal at the Olympic Games in Innsbruck was generally regarded as his greatest career achievement, winning at Kitzbhel in 1984 meant something very special to him, considering he hadn't won there in seven years. That honor went to a little-known Austrian from Lech, Patrick Ortlieb, who had never won a major event. Instead, it focuses on the microcosm of his relationship with Eva as they are spirited away from the finish in an ambulance before she drives him from Tyrol back to Carinthia the next day. Enter 22-year old Franz Klammer. Hermann Maiers nickname, the Herminator, was inspired at the 1998 Games by the. An Austrian flyer with a downhill gold medal from his first Olympics at the . So I decided to take even more risks than I had planned, especially in the Ochsenschlag section. Championships in Schladming in February 2013. Olymipc downhill champion 1976 (Innsbruck). And then I came down. Franz Klammers 1976 Olympic Downhill. As he drove through the Austrian countryside from Klagenfurt to Villach, Kresse was quick to point out a little-known fact about Carinthian skiing. In the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, the stakes rose. The FULL unedited original legendary run of. Options: Reply Quote Re: Where to find Franz Klammer 1976 Innsbruck downhill video? Two-time world champion and former alpine ski racer who dominated the four consecutive seasons of the World Cup in the downhill event, Standing aloof as the extraordinary defining rider in an alpine ski Franz Klammer protrudes among those alpine ski heroes. Franz Klammer In 1976, How the legendary Austrian skier won one of the most exciting Olympic downhill races of all time. Once more, it was Draggan, working then for CBS, who set up the encounter in a nice restaurant in the French resort. Posted by: DeusxMac Date: July 21, 2021 08:38PM Don't forget this was 1976. I spoke about it with ABC studio producer Draggan Mihailovich, a Tomba fan, who organized the journey. Chasing the Line screenplay does a masterful job in capturing the pressure he felt that week. says Franz Klammer whose hair-raising romp to gold at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck is still regarded as one of the . Ian Wooldridge the long-time sports writer for the London Daily Mail summed up Klammers feat best: The greatest single sporting achievement in my lifetime and no doubt beyond.. Klammer's gold-medal-winning downhill run at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics was anything but dull. At 60, Franz Klammer remains a charismatic and ruggedly dishy figure, along Liam Neeson lines. As a consolation prize, Proell won the FIS gold medal for her success in the three-event combined, yet she apparently threw the medal away after receiving it. He won for the nation, for every Austrian skier. First of all, biopics fail because they are almost like passion plays. Klammer would go on to have an unprecedented career. Some of ski racings greatest characters have attracted even more attention from the media and the crowds, thanks to nicknames invented by fans, friends or reporters. For days everyone talked about that thrilling ski run. The story of Franz Klammer is the story of ski racing in Carinthia. With the Super-G, as a second speed race, not existing at the time, Klammer's career was only downhill (apart from a world title in the combined event in 1974), which explains why despite his overwhelming domination, the Austrian skier, born on 3 December 1953 in Mooswald (Carinthia), was never able to compete for the large general classification globe in the World Cup in an era particularly characterised by the success of the Swede Ingemar Stenmark. The pressure on the young farm boy from Mooswald was immense. From 1948 through 1980, the Winter Olympics were also the World Championships for alpine skiing. During the call, he also invited Maier to visit him next spring in Los Angeles. All the other actors we found they were perfect, said Schmied, lighting up with excitement. In 1975 and 1976 he was the best downhill skier in the world. Show more Download Available now 9 minutes Last on Sat 15 Feb 2014. Didier Cuche won his fifth Hahnenkamm last January. He was 21st on a day where Austria swept the first nine places behind winner Hermann Maier. His technique over an icy slope, his jumping skills and his ability to find incredible race lines remain absolutely unique. I really was happy of course, and relieved, that I did my greatest race, or my most important run. I watch it every four years at the Olympics but Klammers run is on my Mount Rushmore of Most Exciting Events I have seen in nearly 50 years of watching sports. It will premiere Oct. 26 in Villach, Austria, near Klammers childhood home of Mooswald. It was just the idea of making something about Franz Klammer., But Pochlatko also saw the challenge. But she still appeared confident heading into the Games. And the two met that night at The Londoner forging both a friendship and a partnership in telling the story of ski racing that has spanned nearly two decades. I was so focused, I was so concentrated, just on the run and then half-way down, I was looking at the crowd, kind of now I'd better do something to win the race. Ironically, it wasnt his first visit to the little-used speed course on Patscherkofel. I remember, after he won, we all went outside and played like we were Franz Klammer!. The media were omnipresent. There was a sense of calm an indicator of confidence as the 22-year-old athlete put his poles over the starting wand. The screams of thousands of spectators must have been heard for miles. Today, more than 45 years later, its legend still lives on, an enduring story of what many consider to be the greatest ski race of all time. Bernhard Russi stared up at the massive 1976 Olympic downhill course at Innsbruck, Austria, clinging to the fastest time of the day and waiting for one final top racer: Austrian star Franz Klammer . Salmina brought in his friend and Hahnankemm race chief Alex Naglich to create the racing environment for the film. Here is a Pro-Quality transfer from my fathers original master tape and it turned out brilliant and clear. Literally, the entire mountain was shaking, said Russi. I had seen in training that a few skiers, including Ken Read of Canada, had tested a straighter yet very risky line there. They also brought the 1976 downhill race course back to life, albeit with machine grooming to make it a bit more racer friendly. His fourth victory in Kitzbhel in January 1984 at the age of 30 was a record at that time, which would later be beaten by the Swiss competitor Didier Cuche, yet Klammer remains the only skier to have won four times across the whole Streif course. Klammer, a simple young man, was more comfortable with the C4s. The 1974-75 winter was practically perfect for Kaiser . And suddenly, there were 60,000 people in the stadium and the whole mountain started to shake, Bernhard Russi explains. So she really had no clue who I was.. It was always a big goal for me to be like Franz Klammer. 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