Date 30 January 1964 Winning time 2:18.16 | Competitors 84 from 27 nations | |
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Venue Patscherkofel
Tyrol, Austria | ||
The Men's downhill competition of the 1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, was held at Patscherkofel on Thursday, 30 January. The defending world champion was Karl Schranz of Austria, and defending Olympic champion Jean Vuarnet of France had retired from competition.
The race course had a number of casualties during training runs, including the death of Ross Milne of Australia. This led to a label of "Course of Fear." Zimmermann was favored by many to win the downhill and to the delight of the Austrian fans he won by 0.74 seconds.
The starting gate was at an elevation of 1,952 m (6,404 ft), and the vertical drop was 867 m (2,844 ft). The course length was 3.120 km (1.939 mi) and Zimmerman's winning run resulted in an average speed of 81.297 km/h (50.52 mph), with an average vertical descent rate of 6.275 m/s (20.59 ft/s). Following the victory, Zimmerman was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the United States.
A dozen years later in 1976, Franz Klammer raced on a slightly shorter course (by 100 metres (110 yards)) and shaved more than 32 seconds off of Zimmerman's time to famously win the Olympic downhill.
Results
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