‘A dream came true’ – Beat Feuz wins blue riband men’s Olympic downhill

The most consistent downhill skier of all time finally added the lone piece of hardware missing from his trophy case on Monday when Switzerland’s Beat Feuz struck gold in the sport’s most prestigious event.

The 34-year-old from the tiny village of Schangnau won the Olympic men’s downhill title with a blistering trip down the unforgiving speed course known as the Rock in 1min 42.69sec, coming in a scant 0.10sec ahead of France’s Johan Clarey, who took the silver, and 0.14sec faster than Austria’s Matthias Mayer, who added a bronze to his Sochi gold of eight years ago.

“I can’t think of anything more beautiful than flying home with a gold medal around my neck,” said Feuz, the four-time reigning World Cup downhill champion with a record 45 career wins in alpine skiing’s fastest discipline. “It was perfect weather, no wind, and I was just standing perfectly on the skis. A dream came true.”

A jubilant Feuz tossed one of his skis high in the air in the finish area after seeing the green light indicating he had taken the lead with a run that knocked the Norwegian pre-race favorite Aleksander Aamodt Kilde off the podium. Thrown off by the extra speed of the upper sections of the 890m track, Kilde’s eventual fifth-place finish completed an underwhelming day for alpine skiing’s power couple after his partner Mikaela Shiffrin skied out of the women’s giant slalom earlier Monday.

Experience proved a crucial asset in successfully negotiating the 40 gates along the unfamiliar man-made piste in the absence of the usual test events that allow skiers to get accustomed to the mountain. The men’s World Cup downhill and super-G races scheduled at the newly constructed facility on Xiaohaituo in February 2020 were among the first