His best-known success was at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, where he won a gold medal in the individual normal hill event.

On 5 March 1976, he set the ski jumping world record distance at 174 metres (571 ft).

[1][2] And again two days later improved world record at 176 metres (577 ft), both of them set in Oberstdorf, West Germany.

[4] At a 1976 (March 5–7) ski jumping event in Oberstdorf, Germany, Innauer became the first person to achieve perfect marks from all five judges (20 points maximum).

This mark has been matched by only five others since: Kazuyoshi Funaki at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Sven Hannawald and Hideharu Miyahira at the same 2003 World Cup competition in Willingen, Germany,[5] Wolfgang Loitzl at Bischofshofen, Austria in 2009 during the 2008/09 Four Hills Tournament.