Men's Downhill at the XIII Olympic Winter Games | |||||||||||||
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Venue | Whiteface Mountain Wilmington, New York, U.S. | ||||||||||||
Date | February 14, 1980 | ||||||||||||
Competitors | 47 from 22 nations | ||||||||||||
Winning time | 1:45.50 | ||||||||||||
Medalists | |||||||||||||
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Alpine skiing at the 1980 Winter Olympics | ||
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Downhill | men | women |
Giant slalom | men | women |
Slalom | men | women |
Men's Downhill | |
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Location | Whiteface Mountain |
Vertical | 832 m (2,730 ft) |
Top elevation | 1,313 m (4,308 ft) |
Base elevation | 481 m (1,578 ft) |
The Men's Downhill competition of the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid was held at Whiteface Mountain on Thursday, February 14. [1] [2] [3]
The defending world champion was Josef Walcher of Austria, while Switzerland's Peter Müller was the defending World Cup downhill champion and led the 1980 World Cup. [4] [5] Defending Olympic champion Franz Klammer did not compete; he was not selected to the Austrian Olympic team in 1980. [6]
Gold medalist Leonhard Stock was an alternate on the Austrian downhill team, at the Olympics for the slalom. His fast training times earned him a spot on the four-man team, displacing Walcher, the reigning world champion. [7] [8] [9] All four Austrians in the race finished in the top ten and Müller was fourth.
The course started at an elevation of 1,313 m (4,308 ft) above sea level with a vertical drop of 832 m (2,730 ft) and a length of 3.009 km (1.87 mi). Stock's winning time was 105.50 seconds, yielding an average speed of 102.677 km/h (63.8 mph), with an average vertical descent rate of 7.886 m/s (25.9 ft/s).
The race was started at 11:30 local time, (UTC −5). At the starting gate, the skies were broken overcast and snowing, the temperature was −10.0 °C (14.0 °F), wind speed was 53 km/h (33 mph) and the snow condition was hard packed.
Source: [1]
Franz Klammer is a former champion alpine ski racer from Austria. Klammer overwhelmingly dominated the downhill event for four consecutive World Cup seasons (1975–78). He was the gold medalist at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, winning the downhill at Patscherkofel by a margin of 0.33 seconds with a time of 1:45.73. He won 25 World Cup downhills, including four on the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel. He holds the record for the most victories (four) on the full course at Kitzbühel.
Patscherkofel is a mountain and ski area in the Alps, in Tyrol in western Austria, 7 km (4 mi.) south of Innsbruck. The peak rises to a summit elevation of 2,246 m (7,369 ft) above sea level. The town of Igls at its northwest base is at 870 m (2,854 ft), a vertical drop of 1,376 m (4,514 ft).
The men's downhill of the 2006 Winter Olympics was held at Sestriere, Italy, on Sunday, 12 February.
Josef "Sepp" Walcher was an Austrian World Cup alpine ski racer. He specialized in the downhill event and won the gold medal at the World Championships in 1978 at Garmisch, West Germany.
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