Gafner achieved second place overall in their special downhill discipline in the 1985/86 European Cup season . She celebrated her first major success in the World Cup when she surprisingly won the downhill run from Schwarzenberg on January 10, 1987 with start number 35 in front of her compatriot Maria Walliser , who was already celebrated as the winner . Before that, Gafner had not finished in the fastest 15 in any World Cup races and had not won any World Cup points. With eleventh place in the last downhill of the 1986/87 season in Vail , Gafner was able to score points in the World Cup for the second time, with which she already reached tenth place in the Downhill World Cup this winter.
In mid-January 1988, Gafner achieved two top 10 results with two seventh places in the two downhill runs from Zinal , before celebrating her second World Cup victory a week later in the downhill run of the silver jug races in Bad Gastein and finally seventh in the Downhill World Cup in the winter of 1987/88 has been. After her second World Cup victory, Gafner was also used for the first time in a major event, the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary - but not in the special downhill, but in the combination. However, Gafner, who started with number one, was eliminated in the combined descent and remained without result. Two weeks after the Olympics, on March 4, 1988, Gafner suffered injuries in both knees in a fall on the Vail World Cup descent. Her teammates Maria Walliser and Vreni Schneider also fell and suffered knee injuries. After these three serious falls and because of heavy snowfall and poor visibility, the race was stopped and repeated the next day.
On January 12, 1989, Gafner was second on the downhill from Grindelwald for the third time on the podium of a World Cup race. The next day she was fourth in the second downhill at the same place. At the 1989 World Cup in Vail, Gafner fell again on January 30 in the first downhill training session and suffered serious injuries in his right knee, which is why the second season in a row came to an early end for them. After the next season in 1989/1990 was unsuccessful and she could no longer score points in the World Cup, Gafner resigned from active ski racing in 1990.
Switzerland