Anja Haas attended the main ski school in Neustift and then the ski trade school in Stams . She achieved her first international successes at the Junior World Championships , in which she participated from 1988 to 1990. After 1988 had already reached a fifth place in the downhill, she won in 1989 in Aleyska two bronze medals in the downhill and in the combination and in 1990 in Zinal another bronze medal in the combination. During the same period, she was also on the podium several times at the Austrian junior championships. Although she performed well in all disciplines in the junior races, in the World Cup she mainly concentrated on the downhill. That she also had potential in slalom, she proved several times with good results in combinations.
In the 1989/90 season Haas won World Cup points for the first time with two ninth places in the combinations of Steamboat Springs and Haus im Ennstal . From 1990 she was a member of the national team of the Austrian Ski Association and was regularly used in the World Cup. After four more top 10 placements, the then 19-year-old celebrated her first World Cup victory on the downhill from Furano on February 24, 1991. However , this success came too late for a possible participation in the world championship in Saalbach-Hinterglemm , there she was only a spectator. Three weeks after her victory, Haas finished second in the downhill from Vail , making her seventh in the downhill world cup and twelfth in the overall world cup in the 1990/91 season . In addition, as in the previous year, she took eighth place in the combined classification and she became Austrian downhill champion in 1991 .
In the 1991/92 season , Haas had some trouble confirming the good results of their first full World Cup winter. Ultimately, a second place in the combination of Schruns was her best World Cup result. In the downhill she did not get past fifth place, because at the beginning of February she suffered a cruciate ligament rupture in Grindelwald , whereupon the season ended prematurely for her. The next winter , Haas started fifth in the Vail Downhill. After that, however, she did not make it back into the top ten until the end of January. After missing the Olympic Games last year due to injury, this year she was able to take part in a major event for the first time. At the 1993 World Championships in Morioka - Shizukuishi , Japan, which was characterized by poor weather conditions , she surprisingly achieved third place in the downhill and won the bronze medal behind Canadian Kate Pace and Norwegian Astrid Lødemel . Then things went uphill again in the World Cup and two weeks after the World Cup downhill she was in first place in a World Cup downhill for the second time in Veysonnaz, Switzerland . At the end of the season, she finally finished fourth in the Downhill World Cup, which was her best result in a discipline World Cup.
The 1993/94 season began Haas to No. 18 in Tignes with her third World Cup victory in the departure of St. Anton am Arlberg . After that, however, there were largely no top placements, only in January she achieved sixth place in the downhill from Cortina d'Ampezzo . Even at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , she did not achieve an attractive result. In the downhill run, which was held in Kvitfjell , she only placed 31st, more than three seconds behind, and in the combination she was eliminated in the first slalom run after she had finished 23rd in the combined downhill run . At the end of winter she suffered a severe pelvic injury on the downhill from Vail, which is why she was late in training for the next season. Throughout the 1994/95 season , however, she was affected by persistent back pain as a result of her fall and a 24th place in the downhill from Åre was her best World Cup result that winter. Her results were not much better early next winter and Haas decided to retire at the age of 24 during the 1995/96 season .
Austria
