One month after that, he participated in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, with a 7th place on the 1500 m as his best performance.

One year later, on the same track, he won silver at the World Allround Championships, finishing second behind Rolf Falk-Larssen.

Gustafson had the best allround point-sum (samalog), but Falk-Larssen won by the rule that a skater winning three distances, and merely having finished the fourth, is automatically pronounced the champion.

He won Olympic gold in the 5,000 m, ahead of Soviet skater Igor Malkov by a mere two hundredths of a second.

In January, he won the European Allround Championships in The Hague, winning all four distances, an achievement no one else has been able to reach in post-war speedskating.

[1] Gustafson's only notable achievement after the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary was a second-place finish behind Bart Veldkamp in the 1990 European Allround Championships.