The men's downhill competition of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics was held on Thursday, 15 February, at the

Jeongseon Alpine Centre Jeongseon Alpine Centre () was an alpine skiing area in South Korea. It was located on the slopes of the mountain of Gariwangsan, in Bukpyeong-myeon in the county of Jeongseon. Overview Jeongseon was a venue for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic ...

PyeongChang Pyeongchang ( , ; in full, ''Pyeongchang-gun'' ) is a county in the province of Gangwon-do, South Korea, located in the Taebaek Mountains region. It is home to several Buddhist temples, including Woljeongsa. It is about east southeast of Seo ...

. Scheduled for Sunday, 11 February, winds in excess of forced officials to postpone the race four days.

Summary

The defending champion was

Matthias Mayer Matthias Mayer (; born 9 June 1990) is an Austrian retired World Cup alpine ski racer and Career Born in Afritz am See in Carinthia, Mayer made his World Cup debut in Sestriere in February 2009. His best discipline is super-G. After several t ...

. Other competitors included the 2014 silver medalist

Christof Innerhofer Christof Innerhofer (born 17 December 1984) is an Italian World Cup alpine ski racer, the 2011 world champion in super-G. in all five alpine disciplines and specializes in the speed events of downhill Biography Born in Bruneck, Innerhofer li ...

, the bronze medalist

Kjetil Jansrud Kjetil Jansrud (born 28 August 1985) is a Norwegian former World Cup alpine ski racer and Olympic champion. He competed in all alpine disciplines apart from slalom, and his best event was the giant slalom where he has six World Cup podiums and ...

, as well as the 2010 silver medalist

Aksel Lund Svindal Aksel Lund Svindal (born 26 December 1982) is a Norwegian former World Cup alpine ski racer. Born in Lørenskog in Akershus county, Svindal is a two-time overall World Cup champion (2007 and 2009), an Olympic gold medalist in super-G at the 20 ...

. Through 2018, the Olympic men's downhill has yet to have a repeat champion.

won the gold medal, with a slight advantage over

(silver) and

Beat Feuz Beat Feuz (; born 11 February 1987) is a Swiss former World Cup alpine ski racer, specializing in the speed events of downhill and super-G. He is 2017 World champion and 2022 Olympic champion in downhill. In 2021, he won consecutive downhills on ...

(bronze), who gained his first Olympic medal. The race course was in length, with a vertical drop of from a starting

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 ...

. Svindal had an average speed of and an average vertical descent rate of .

Qualification

A total of up to 320 alpine skiers qualified across all eleven events. Athletes qualified for this event by having met the A qualification standard only, which meant having 80 or less FIS Points and being ranked in the top 500 in the Olympic FIS points list. The Points list takes into average the best results of athletes per discipline during the qualification period (July 1, 2016 to January 21, 2018). Countries received additional quotas by having athletes ranked in the top 30 of the current World Cup season (two per gender maximum, overall across all events). After the distribution of B standard quotas (to nations competing only in the slalom and giant slalom events), the remaining quotas were distributed using the Olympic FIS Points list, with each athlete only counting once for qualification purposes. A country could only enter a maximum of four athletes for the event.

Results

The race was started at 11:30 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 ...

+9). At the starting gate, the skies were clear, the temperature was , and the snow condition was hard.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alpine skiing at the 2018 Winter Olympics - Men's downhill Men's alpine skiing at the 2018 Winter Olympics