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Franz Klammer Downhill Gold (Way OT)

Posted By: Bill Riles
Date: Thursday, 14 April 2011, at 9:23 p.m.

In Response To: Greatest Sports Moment (Way OT) (Stanley E. Richards)

Klammer, an Austrian, won the 1976 Winter Olympic Downhill gold medal on home snow in Innsbruck in most dramatic fashion. The mountain was filled with his countrymen screaming their lungs out. He was favored though someone else had posted some incredible time no one else had approached. He was the last skier of the day so the shadows were beginning to cover the course and the snow was chopped up quite a bit after a day of racing the course.

He was on the ragged edge of disaster seemingly the entire run, flailing in the air and on the ground to keep his balance, and never letting up a bit in his quest for the gold -- as it were, the pedal to the metal the entire way. The video and the announcer's call were incredible. You can find it on Google. If you've never seen it, it is well worth your while.

Other individual moments would have to include Beamon (and his reaction), Bill Johnson's (Billy Downhill) called Winter Olympic Downhill gold medal in Sarajevo in 1984, Phelps 8 gold medals w/ the one event where he won by 0.01, and Spitz's 7 gold medals. Team events would include the 1980 Olympic USA victory over Russia in hockey in Lake Placid and the Russian basketball upset of the USA in the 1972 Munich Olympics among others.

But for sheer excitement, significance, audience, etc. I'll go with Franz Klammer's Downhill as the Greatest Individual Sports Moment that I've seen.

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