Alpine skiing at the 1960 Winter Olympics – Women's downhill

The Women's downhill competition of the Squaw Valley 1960 Olympics was held at Squaw Valley on Saturday, February 20.

The defending world champion was Lucile Wheeler of Canada, who had retired the previous year; defending Olympic champion Madeleine Berthod of Switzerland did not compete in this event.

Nineteen-year-old Heidi Biebl of Germany won the gold medal, while American Penny Pitou was a second behind for the silver; the bronze medalist was Traudl Hecher of Austria.

The race was run on KT-22, with a starting elevation of 2447 m above sea level; the course length was 1.828 km, with a vertical drop of 553 m. Biebl's winning time of 97.6 seconds yielded an average speed of 67.426 km/h, with an average vertical descent rate of 5.666 m/s.

Helmets
This was the first Olympic downhill in which crash helmets were mandatory, following the race death in 1959 of Canadian John Semmelink at Garmisch, West Germany. During his final race, Semmelink wore a leather helmet, which was more protection than many racers used at the time. The U.S. Ski Team first wore crash helmets at the 1956 Winter Olympics, but most of the Europeans went without.

Results
Saturday, February 20, 1960 The race was started at 10:00 local time, (UTC −8).
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