At the end of the 1970s, Gerhard Pfaffenbichler was accepted into the squad of the Austrian Ski Association (ÖSV). He achieved his first international success at the European Junior Championships in Achenkirch in 1979 , when he won the silver medal in the downhill behind his compatriot Erwin Resch . In the winter of 1979/80 followed with third place in the downhill from Laax, the first podium in the European Cup .
From next winter Pfaffenbichler was also used in the World Cup . In his first World Cup race, the downhill in Val-d'Isère on December 7, 1980, he finished eighth in the top 10. At the end of January he only missed his first podium place in St. Anton by three hundredths of a second, but in the next World Cup downhill run on March 5, 1981 in Aspen , he was third on the podium for the first time. The next day he finished the last downhill of the season in sixth place, with which he achieved eighth place in the Downhill World Cup and 28th place in the overall World Cup and thus achieved his best overall results in his first World Cup season. At national level, he celebrated his greatest success on February 18, 1981, when he won the downhill of the Austrian championships in Radstadt ahead of Erwin Resch and Franz Klammer .
Pfaffenbichler could not confirm the results of the previous year in the winter of 1981/82 . A ninth place at the start in Val-d'Isère remained his best result. Although he was in the top 15 five more times, Pfaffenbichler had to go to the ÖSV's internal elimination more and more often before World Cup races in order to qualify for further World Cup starts within the strong downhill team. With his results he could not buy a ticket for the 1982 World Cup in Schladming . The 1982/83 season started even worse than the previous one. In three starts in the first seven downhill runs of the season, he finished 16, 17 and 19 and never got into the points. Due to two injury-related failures in the Austrian team, he was also given a starting place for the downhill in Sarajevo on January 28, 1983. There he unexpectedly celebrated the greatest success of his career when he won the dress rehearsal for the Olympic Winter Games next year in front of Canadians Steve Podborski and Franz Klammer . In March, two top 10 places followed in Aspen and Lake Louise , which made him 16th in the Downhill World Cup, as in the previous year. However, Pfaffenbichler was absent from the 1984 Olympic Games. A fifth place in Val-d'Isère as the best World Cup result of the 1983/84 season as well as an eleventh place in Laax and a tenth place in Kitzbühel were not enough for qualification.
Pfaffenbichler was never able to repeat the surprising victory in Sarajevo, and there were no further podium places in the World Cup. In the 1984/85 season he did not reach the points in a single World Cup race, but he had to pause several races due to an injury. In the winter of 1985/86 he reported back and in February achieved fourth place in each of the two runs from Morzine . He had already achieved eighth place at the season opener in Las Leñas , Argentina . In the last race of the season he could no longer participate, because in Åre he suffered a cruciate ligament tear , which meant the premature end of the season. In the Downhill World Cup he could not improve - like two years ago, he finished 19th - but in the overall World Cup he achieved his second-best result in 34th. The reason for this was that Pfaffenbichler was also able to score in the Super-G for the first time and for the only time in his career in two combinations (seventh place in St. Anton and eleventh place in Crans-Montana ).
In his comeback season 1986/87 Pfaffenbichler's best results were a fifth place in the Super-G of Furano and an eighth place in the downhill of Wengen . After he had achieved three top 10 places in January 1988 (fifth place in the Super-G of Leukerbad and eighth in each of the downhill runs from Bad Kleinkirchheim and Schladming) Pfaffenbichler finally succeeded in what he was previously denied: participation in a major event. At the Olympic Winter Games in Calgary in 1988 he was not used in the first ever Olympic Super-G, but in the downhill he was the second best Austrian and came in a good fifth place. A fifth place was also the best World Cup result for the Salzburg man in the 1988/89 season , but otherwise he was only two more times in the fastest 15 this winter . He was therefore missing again at the World Cup in Vail . In December 1989 Pfaffenbichler suffered another cruciate ligament tear in a fall on the Saslong in Val Gardena , whereupon the 28-year-old retired after nine years in the World Cup and a total of 22 top 10 placements.
Austria
