The women's
downhill competition of the
Vancouver 2010 Olympics was held at
Whistler Creekside on Wednesday, February 17.
The women's downhill course runs on the top part of Wildcard, then the bottom of Jimmy's Joker, then finishes out of the valley on Lower Franz's Run. Finally the course merges with the Dave Murray Downhill at the Grandstand finish.
The course was labeled as extremely difficult for skiers and most training runs were cancelled due to weather conditions. This resulted in several accidents during the competition. The worst accident involved Swedish skier
Anja Pärson
Anja Sofia Tess Pärson (; born 25 April 1981) is a Swedish former alpine skier. She is an Olympic gold medalist, seven-time gold medalist at the World Championships, and two-time overall Alpine Skiing World Cup champion. This included winn ...
, who lost balance on the last jump before the finish, which resulted in a flight and subsequent fall, but without serious health consequences. Earlier in the same place Swiss skier
Dominique Gisin fell;
The Canadian Press: Women's Olympic downhill course takes a bite out of competition
/ref> Pärson returned the very next day to win the bronze in the super combined
Combined is an event in alpine ski racing. The event format has changed within the last 30 years. A traditional combined competition is a two-day event consisting of one run of downhill and two runs of slalom; each discipline takes place on a s ...
.
Lindsey Vonn
Lindsey Caroline Vonn ( ; born October 18, 1984) is an American FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, World Cup Alpine skiing, alpine ski racer. She won four World Cup overall championships – third amongst female skiers to Annemarie Moser-Pröll and Mika ...
won the gold medal, teammate Julia Mancuso
Marie Mancuso (born March 9, 1984) is an American retired World Cup alpine ski racer, Olympic gold medalist and podcast host. She won the giant slalom at the 2006 Winter Olympics, and was the silver medalist in both downhill and combined i ...
took the silver, and Elisabeth Görgl was the bronze medalist. Through 2019, it is the sole victory for the United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
in the women's downhill at the Olympics. Görgl's mother Traudl Hecher was also a bronze medalist for Austria in this event in 1960
It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism.
Events January
* Janu ...
and 1964
Events January
* January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
* January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...
.
The ''Franz's Downhill'' course started at an elevation
The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...
of above sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...
with a vertical drop of and a length of . Vonn's winning time of 104.19 seconds yielded an average course speed of , with an average vertical descent rate of .
Results
''Wednesday, February 17, 2010''
The race was started at 11:00 local time, (UTC
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
−8). At the starting gate, the skies were clear, the temperature was , and the snow condition was compact. The temperature at the finish was .
References
External links
2010 Winter Olympics results: Ladies' Downhill
from https://web.archive.org/web/20091025194336/http://www.vancouver2010.com/; retrieved 2010-02-16.
Ski Racing.com
- ''Olympics: Vonn wins downhill gold, Mancuso silver'' - 2010-02-17
FIS Results
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alpine skiing at the 2010 Winter Olympics - Women's downhill
Downhill