David Gleirscher lives in Telfes im Stubai and starts for RV Swarovski Halltal Absam. Father Gerhard was also a luge athlete and won three medals at world championships . Gleirscher is a police officer and father of a son (* 2017).
He had his first success in 2013 at the Junior World Championships in Park City when he won the bronze medal in a single-seater. A year later, he won the gold medal with the team relay at the home JWM in Igls . In the individual, he narrowly missed another medal in fourth.
In the winter of 2014/15 he completed his first full World Cup season and, in twelfth place in the overall ranking, was the third-best Austrian behind Wolfgang Kindl and Reinhard Egger . As fourth in the Altenberg sprint , he barely missed a podium, and was also among the top ten two more times. The following season he finished eleventh overall and finished both sprint and individual competitions in the top 10 at the World Championships at Königssee . In the U23 single-seater category, he won the silver medal behind Tucker West . The 2016/17 season was less successful with a 24th place in the World Cup, but the 2017/18 winter he finished twelfth overall.
At his first Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang on February 11, 2018, he surprisingly won the gold medal without ever having achieved a podium finish in the World Cup. He thus secured the first ÖRV single-seater title since Manfred Schmid in Grenoble in 1968 . Gleirscher benefited from a driving error by the leading German Felix Loch , who fell from first to fifth in the last run. Four days later he won the bronze medal in the team relay with Madeleine Egle and Peter Penz / Georg Fischler . After he made his first podium places in the following season, he won a World Cup race for the first time in Altenberg on January 11, 2020.
His younger brother Nico is also active as a luge competitor.