Two years after the 1956 Olympics, Sailer won three gold medals and one silver at the 1958 World Championships in Bad Gastein, Austria. He won five of six possible Olympic/World Championship races, missing a perfect record with a silver in the Bad Gastein slalom, seven-tenths of a second back. Sailer also repeated as champion in the combined for a seventh world title in two years. Due to controversy over his amateur status after receiving compensation for acting (and skiing) in movies, he retired from ski racing competition in 1959.