Date | 21 February 1960 — 10:00 | |
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Status | Olympic | |
Location | KT-22, Squaw Valley, California | |
Participants | 65 from 21 countries | |
Course Setter | Barney McLean | USA |
Details | Gates: 56 Length: 1828 m Start Altitude: 2447 m Vertical Drop: 553 m |
After snow postponed the downhill, the giant slalom was the first men’s Alpine event of the 1960 Winter Olympics. The third skier down KT-22 was Austrian Josef “Pepi” Stiegler, who took the lead with a time of 1:48.7, but the time was first announced as 1:48.1. Switzerland’s Roger Staub was the sixth starter, his time of 1:48.3 seemingly placing him second at the time. But 18 minutes after his run ended, Stiegler’s time was corrected to 1:48.7 and Staub was in the lead, his time holding up for the gold medal. Staub had won two medals at the 1958 World Championships, with a silver in the downhill behind Toni Sailer, and a bronze in the combined, but Staub tragically died in 1974 in a hang gliding accident. Stiegler won the silver medal, coming back in 1964 to win bronze in this event and winning a gold medal in the 1964 slalom. He would later settle in the United States at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and his daughter, Resi Stiegler, would ski in the Olympics for the US. Pepi Stiegler was later afflicted with multiple sclerosis.