Contents
| Men's downhill at the IX Olympic Winter Games | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Venue | Patscherkofel Tyrol, Austria | ||||||||||||
| Date | 30 January 1964 | ||||||||||||
| Competitors | 84 from 27 nations | ||||||||||||
| Winning time | 2:18.16 | ||||||||||||
| Medalists | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Alpine skiing at the 1964 Winter Olympics | ||
|---|---|---|
 | ||
| Downhill | men | women |
| Giant slalom | men | women |
| Slalom | men | women |
| Men's Downhill | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | Patscherkofel |
| Vertical | 867 m (2,844 ft) |
| Top elevation | 1,952 m (6,404 ft) |
| Base elevation | 1,085 m (3,560 ft) |
The Men's downhill competition of the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, was held at Patscherkofel on Thursday, 30 January. [1] The defending world champion was Karl Schranz of Austria, [2] and defending Olympic champion Jean Vuarnet of France had retired from competition. [3]
The race course had a number of casualties during training runs, including the death of Ross Milne of Australia, [4] [5] which led to a label of "Course of Fear." [6] Zimmermann was favored by many to win the downhill and to the delight of the Austrian fans he won by 0.74 seconds. [6] [7]
The starting gate was at an elevation of 1,952 m (6,404 ft), and the vertical drop was 867 m (2,844 ft). [1] The course length was 3.120 km (1.94 mi) and Zimmerman's winning run resulted in an average speed of 81.297 km/h (50.5 mph), with an average vertical descent rate of 6.275 m/s (20.6 ft/s). Following the victory, Zimmerman was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the United States. [7]
A dozen years later in 1976, Franz Klammer raced on a slightly shorter course (by 100 meters (110 yards)) and shaved more than 32 seconds off of Zimmerman's time to famously win the Olympic downhill. [8]
