Alpine skiing at the 1980 Winter Olympics – Men's downhill

The Men's Downhill competition of the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid was held at Whiteface Mountain on Thursday, February 14.

The defending world champion was Josef Walcher of Austria, while Switzerland's Peter Müller was the defending World Cup downhill champion and led the 1980 World Cup. Defending Olympic champion Franz Klammer did not compete; he was not selected to the Austrian Olympic team in 1980.

Gold medalist Leonhard Stock was an alternate on the Austrian downhill team, at the Olympics for the slalom. His fast training times earned him a spot on the four-man team, displacing Walcher, the reigning world champion. All four Austrians in the race finished in the top ten and Müller was fourth.

The course started at an elevation of 1313 m above sea level with a vertical drop of 832 m and a length of 3.009 km. Stock's winning time was 105.50 seconds, yielding an average speed of 102.677 km/h, with an average vertical descent rate of 7.886 m/s.

Results
The race was started at 11:30 local time, (UTC −5). At the starting gate, the skies were broken overcast and snowing, the temperature was -10.0 C, wind speed was 53 km/h and the snow condition was hard packed. Source: