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What’s this? The world’s greatest (ex) World Cup downhill racer wearing a helmet? Is Franz Klammer going soft, or just seeing sense as he speeds towards his 55th birthday?

Of one thing there is no doubt. Like an ageing gun-slinger, Klammer – with a seemingly untouchable record of 25 World Cup downhill wins behind him - is still fast. Very fast. I had the opportunity to be reminded of this at St Oswald, the Carinthian resort where he first put on pair of his father’s skis at the age of five.

Carinthia, Austria’s southern-most province, shares its borders with Italy and Slovenia. It boasts a Mediterranean climate, with something of an Italian lifestyle and even an area where “Windish” is spoken - a version of German so influenced by Slovenian that flummoxed German visitors have no idea what to make of it.

Carinthia, for all its beautiful mountains and myriad lakes (the Dutch even flock to the seven-mile long Weissensee to hold their annual ice-skating championships in a more-ice-sure environment than they can guarantee back home) has never been as fashionable as neighbouring Salzburgerland or the Tyrol. When the young Klammer (who incidentally claims he can’t ice skate even though he loved skiing on ice during his race career) was trying to get into the Austrian ski team he was regarded as something of an outsider and even a gate-crasher. But of course once he had achieved such spectacular glory at the Innsbruck Olympics and on the World Cup circuit, he became a national hero, regardless of his humble origins as a poor farmer’s boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

Each winter Klammer makes himself available for a few days to fans who want to ski with him. He is still a high-profile hero in his native land even though it is now 32 years since his wild, helter-skelter downhill dash to win the Olympic gold medal at Innsbruck in 1976. Even now he is so accustomed to being asked for his autograph that he always carries a special marker pen so that he can sign photographs.

These ski-with-Klammer days tend to rotate around St Oswald and the linked spa resort of Bad Kleinkirchheim, the ski area most closely linked with Klammer where the signature World Cup run is named after him. He might also pop up in Nassfeld, Carinthia’s largest resort, and Heiligenblut (holy blood), the strangely named resort near Austria’s highest peak, the Grossglockner.

Here in St Oswald, each time I chase down the mountain behind him, trying to keep that shiny silver helmet and black ski wear in my sights, I lose him, even though he is doing short-swing turns like windscreen-wipers and I am doing giant-slalom turns and flying faster than I dare think to try to keep up. Fortunately between “the Kaiser” and me there is a blonde ski instructress wearing bright orange ski pants. She is a regular in the “ski with Klammer” brigade. “Maybe she fancies you, Franz?” I suggest cheekily. He grins a silent grin. During each breathless descent, I zero in on her, knowing that if I can keep her shapely orange posterior in my sights, she will be my link with Austria’s most accomplished ski god.

“I will never get bored with skiing. I don’t ski every day so why should I? But I do still ski 50 or 60 days a year” says Klammer, when we finally get the chance to chat over lunch. “Most of my skiing is with corporate groups or for my sponsors. I go wherever they want me to go. It gets me around. There is life before death!”

And the helmet? "I use it for off-piste and when the snow conditions are a little thin" he says. "My daughters Sophie and Stephanie are both wearing helmets this year too. I think it's a good thing. I have been know to fall – quite hard – on my head! Quite recently I had a big crash in St Moritz. I was skiing too fast in flat light and hadn’t noticed the snow was on two levels. I hooked a ski and nose-dived into the snow. It was quite a fall! And it made me realise that getting a helmet might be a good idea!

“For me these days skiing is about good snow and good company – not really to do with unskied peaks or difficult terrain. But I miss the old days. There was much more camaraderie back then. We were all one big family. We raced together, and partied together. These days skiing at the highest level is like soccer – the stars are more remote from the public. It’s much harder to get to a world-class skier – you have to go through their agents.” And with that he was gone again, the orange trousers in hot pursuit.

One Carinthian resort which Klammer rarely if ever visits is Dreilandereck, so called because although the slopes are almost entirely in Austria, there’s a small amount of terrain in Italy and Slovenia. The resort is close to Arnoldstein, which I have always felt a great affinity with because of its name. So it was with a certain amount of satisfaction that I finally got to ski there, cruising the long, sweeping runs at a rather more leisurely pace than I was able to enjoy with Klammer.

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