Downhill
Downhill may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Downhill'' (1927 film), a British film by Alfred Hitchcock
* ''Downhill'' (2014 film), a British comedy directed by James Rouse
* ''Downhill'' (2016 film), a Chilean thriller directed by Patrici ...
Val d'Isère
Val may refer to: Val-a
Film
* ''Val'' (film), an American documentary about Val Kilmer, directed by Leo Scott and Ting Poo
Military equipment
* Aichi D3A, a Japanese World War II dive bomber codenamed "Val" by the Allies
* AS Val, a Sov ...
on Sunday, 9 February.
The defending
world champion
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
was Franz Heinzer of Switzerland, who was also the defending
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
downhill champion and led the current season. Defending Olympic champion
Pirmin Zurbriggen
Pirmin Zurbriggen (born 4 February 1963) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from Switzerland. One of the most successful ski racers ever, he won the overall World Cup title four times, an Olympic gold medal in 1988 in Downhill, and nine W ...
of Switzerland had retired from competition two years earlier; this was the fourth consecutive Olympics without the defending champion in the field.
The race was run on a new course on ''La Face de Bellevarde'', designed by
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...
champion
Bernhard Russi
Bernhard Russi (born 20 August 1948) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from Switzerland. Born in Andermatt in the canton of Uri, he is an Olympic, World Cup, and World champion in the downhill event.Patrick Ortlieb, who had yet to win a World Cup event, won the gold medal;
Franck Piccard
Franck Piccard (born 17 September 1965) is a French former Alpine skier.
A native of Les Saisies, Piccard won a total of four Alpine skiing World Cup races.
At the 1988 Olympics in Calgary he won a gold medal in the Super-G competition (the fi ...
of France was only 0.05 seconds back to take the silver, and the bronze medalist was
Günther Mader
Günther Mader (born 24 June 1964) is a former alpine ski racer and Olympic medalist from Austria. Born in Matrei am Brenner, Tyrol, he is one of only five men to have won World Cup races in all five alpine disciplines ( downhill, super ...
of Austria. Ortlieb was first racer on the course, and he became the fifth Austrian to win the event, in its twelfth edition. Heinzer was sixth, more than a second back.
The course started at an
elevation
The elevation of a geographic 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 surface (see Geodetic datum § Vert ...
of above
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...
with a vertical drop of and a course length of . Ortlieb's winning time of 110.37 seconds yielded an average course speed of , with an average vertical descent rate of .
Results
The race was started at 12:15
local time
Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...
, ( UTC +1). At the starting gate, the skies were clear, the temperature was , and the snow condition was hard; the temperature at the finish was lower, at .
Source:
Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'hiver) is a major international multi-sport event held once every four years for sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympic Games, the 1924 Winter Olympics, were h ...