According to some reports, Bjelasnica's moist snow and soft turns favor gliders, such as America's Bill Johnson, over rough- and-tumble stormers such as Klammer, who prefer the fast push of hard, twisting turns and frozen runs. Klammer's attitude toward his Sarajevo competitors is relaxed, almost matter-of-fact. He says the Blizzard ski helped him to regain control on curves and to restore his confidence. In 1980, Kneissl, crushed by recession and oversupply, went bankrupt, forcing Klammer to switch to a ski built by Blizzard, a company run by a boyhood friend. After Innsbruck, Klammer switched, reportedly for $250,000, to a new type of all-plastic ski built by Kneissl, a small Austrian skimaker. ''There were a lot of people, my wife, my family, trainers, coaches.'' And there was an equipment change. Klammer said there were many reasons for the turnaround.
''I'm here to make a good run,'' Klammer said, with a kind of determination that cannot be faked. Whatever the chemistry, Klammer is among the favorites in the downhill, the event that remains, for passionate fans of skiing, the Grand Prix of the slopes. Some said it was a marriage, some said a new brand of skis, others said just time and maturity helped bring him back. This year, however, Klammer is back, testing the slopes for Olympic gold.
Two years earlier, his brother, Klaus, then 16 years old and a promising skier, had tumbled on the course at Lienz, Austria, and was left paralyzed from the waist down.
At Lake Louise in Canada in 1980, Klammer was injured in a bad fall. People said he had lost his feel for the snow, or was unnerved by accidents and personal tragedy. But it would be his last victory until December 1981, at Val d'Is ere, France, nearly four years later. In March 1978, he had won the downhill in Laax, Switzerland, to clinch the World Cup downhill title for the fourth consecutive year. In 1980, Klammer was cut from the strong Austrian team that won eight medals, including three gold, at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.
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