He won 12 World Cup races, with eight downhill victories, and stood on 23 World Cup podiums. In World Cup races, Schranz was overall season champion in 19, winning the downhill event title both years, and won the giant slalom seasonal World Cup in 1969. After a 1966 giant slalom bronze medal in Portillo, Chile, Schranz won another World gold in 1970 at Gröden, this one in the giant slalom. He won the downhill and combined at Chamonix in 1962, adding a silver medal in giant slalom. His record at the World Championships was far better than his Olympic one. From 1957-70 he won nine Arlberg-Kandahar races. Schranz was a four-time champion in the classic Lauberhorn downhill at Wengen, and also won the Hahnenkamm downhill in Kitzbühel four times. However, almost all the top “amateur” skiiers had contracts with various ski companies at that time.
KARL KLAMMER PROFESSIONAL
Prior to the Sapporo Olympics, Avery Brundage, who hated the professionalism of skiiers in the Winter Olympics, singled out Schranz and banned him from the Games for professional contracts, which Schranz admitted to. Expected to win several events at the 1972 Winter Olympics, he never even got to compete. After Jean-Claude Killy won all three Alpine events at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics, he retired from amateur competition, and Schranz took over the mantle of the world’s top ski racer. He first made the Austrian national team in 1958 and competed at three Winter Olympics – in 1960, 1964, and 1968, winning a silver medal in giant slalom in 1964 at Innsbruck. Karl Schranz had a long, successful, but controversial career at the highest levels of international ski racing.
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