Klammer started racing at the relatively late age of 14, competing in the winter whilst working on the family farm during the summer after he dropped out of school.

[1] He had a tough struggle to make the Austrian ski team, which traditionally was dominated by the states of Tyrol and Salzburg.

Klammer has been married to his wife, Eva, since 1979: the couple met in 1975 when he was in Tunisia at a fitness camp with the Austrian ski team.

[3] Entering the 1976 Winter Olympics, the 22-year-old Klammer was the favourite to take the gold medal in the downhill at Innsbruck in his native Austria.

Starting in 15th position, Klammer was the last of the top seeds and knew that Bernhard Russi had set a blistering pace to lead by over a half-second.

Klammer took heavy risks on the treacherous piste, skied on the edge of disaster and won by 0.33 seconds to the delight of the Austrian fans.

Italy's Gustav Thöni defeated Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark in the finals and won his fourth overall title in five years.

In the 1975 season he won 8 of 9 World Cup downhill races, including his first of three consecutive victories (1975–77) on the prestigious Streif on the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel.

He may have been affected by his brother's spinal cord injury in a downhill race, as well as a change of ski supplier (from Fischer to Kneissl).

He answered that although his gold medal at the Olympic Games in Innsbruck was generally regarded as his greatest career achievement, winning at Kitzbühel in 1984 meant something very special to him, considering that he had not won there for seven years.

In a 2015 interview with Graham Bell for The Daily Telegraph, Klammer attributed his success to being the first downhiller to carve a whole turn from start to finish, contrasting his style with skiers of the previous generation such as Karl Schranz and Jean-Claude Killy who would skid at the start of a turn before engaging in a carve.

[1] In an interview with Tom Brokaw that aired on NBC on 13 February 2010, as part of their 2010 Winter Olympics coverage, American Olympian Bode Miller cited Klammer's style and approach to ski racing as a major source of inspiration for him.