| Women's downhill at the XXII Olympic Winter Games | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Maze, Gisin, and Gut on the podium | |||||||||||||
| Venue | Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort Krasnaya Polyana,Russia | ||||||||||||
| Date | 12 February | ||||||||||||
| Competitors | 41 from 23 nations | ||||||||||||
| Winning time | 1:41.57 | ||||||||||||
| Medalists | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Alpine skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics | ||
|---|---|---|
 | ||
| Qualification | ||
| Combined | men | women |
| Downhill | men | women |
| Giant slalom | men | women |
| Slalom | men | women |
| Super-G | men | women |
| Women's Downhill | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | Rosa Khutor |
| Vertical | 790 m (2,592 ft) |
| Top elevation | 1,755 m (5,758 ft) |
| Base elevation | 965 m (3,166 ft) |
Thewomen'sdownhill competition of theSochi 2014 Olympics was held at theRosa Khutor Alpine Resort nearKrasnaya Polyana,Russia, on Wednesday, 12 February.[1] The race was won byTina Maze ofSlovenia andDominique Gisin ofSwitzerland, who posted the same time.Lara Gut, also of Switzerland, was a tenth of a second back and took the bronze medal.
Fabienne Suter was the first out of the gate and led until Gisin surpassed her by 0.37 seconds. Immediately after Gisin,Daniela Merighetti took a provisional second position, and stayed there until Gut, skiing 18th, replaced her at 0.10 seconds behind Gisin. Maze was the 21st racer out of the gate and led at all the intervals, but finished with exactly the same time as Gisin. The best run after Maze was byLotte Smiseth Sejersted of Norway, who finished sixth.
Defending Olympic championLindsey Vonn did not participate due to a knee injury, and the other defending medalists,Julia Mancuso andElisabeth Görgl, finished outside the podium. It was the first time any Olympic alpine event has ended in a tie for the gold.[2][3] Maze also won the first-ever gold medal for Slovenia at the Winter Olympics (since1992), while Gisin and Gut both won their first Olympic medals.[4]
The course started at anelevation of 1,755 m (5,758 ft) abovesea level with a vertical drop of 790 m (2,592 ft) and a length of 2.713 km (1.69 mi).[5] The winning time of 101.57 seconds yielded an average course speed of 96.158 km/h (59.7 mph), with an average vertical descent rate of 7.778 m/s (25.5 ft/s).
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
The race was started at 11:00local time, (UTC+4). At the starting gate, the skies were partly cloudy, the temperature was 3.0 °C (37 °F), and the snow condition was hard. The temperature at the finish was 7.3 °C (45 °F).[5] Six racers did not finish;Tina Weirather did not start due to a season-ending injury during a training run on the course.
