Downhill, Women1

The women’s downhill was the fourth women’s Alpine skiing event at the Beijing Games. The standings from the ongoing downhill World Cup saw Sofia Goggia, gold medallist from PyeongChang four years earlier, in the lead after winning four of the six races contested. She won at Lake Louise (twice), Val-d’Isère, and Cortina d’Ampezzo. The other two races had been won by Lara Gut-Behrami (Zauchensee) and Corinne Suter (Garmisch-Partenkirchen), who placed second in the standings. Goggia had also won two downhill Crystal Globes since the last Olympics, in 2018 and 2021 and, in-between, Nicole Schmidhofer had won in 2019 and Suter in 2020.

Suter was also the reigning 2021 World Champion while Ilka Štuhec was the 2019 champion. Schmidhofer was unable to compete in Beijing as she was still recovering from a knee injury, as was Breezy Johnson, who finished second in the first three World Cup downhills of the season but suffered a knee injury in a training run in Cortina d’Ampezzo on 21 January 2022. Only two days later, in the Super G on the same slope, Goggia had a fall that also caused a knee injury, which led her to withdraw from the Super G in Beijing. She competed in the downhill, as did Štuhec, but they both still struggled with injuries. Of the three scheduled training runs only two were held after one was cancelled due to snow fall. The best times were set by Priska Nufer, who did not compete in this race but started in the Alpine Combined instead, and Joana Hählen, with 2021 World Championship runner-up Kira Weidle, finishing second on both occasions.

The race, postponed for 30 minutes due to wind, was opened by Elena Curtoni and she held the lead until her compatriot Nadia Delago (bib number 11) overtook her by 0.32 seconds. When Goggia (bib number 13) finished her run another 0.41 seconds faster, Italy had a 1-2-3, but Suter (bib number 15) ended the Italian hopes as she set the pace with 1:31.87 with only two more skiers from the top group to come. The two were Weidle who finished fourth, and Gut-Behrami, who after her Super G victory four days earlier, finished back in 16th place.

Corinne Suter gave Switzerland its sixth Olympic gold medal in this event. As Beat Feuz won the men’s downhill, it meant both downhill golds of these Games went to Switzerland. The last time Switzerland did that was exactly 50 years ago with Marie-Theres Nadig and Bernhard Russi (the builder of this slope in Beijing) at Sapporo. Suter won the race with an average speed of 105.96 km/h and 4.70 metres ahead of Goggia. On the manufacturer side, Head won another gold medal while Atomic took silver and bronze.