Alpine skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympics – Men's downhill

The Men's Downhill competition of the Albertville 1992 Olympics was held at Val d'Isère on Sunday, 9 February.

The defending world champion was Franz Heinzer of Switzerland, who was also the defending World Cup downhill champion and led the current season. Defending Olympic champion Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland had retired from competition two years earlier; this was the fourth consecutive Olympics without the defending champion in the field.

The race was run on a new course on La face de Bellevarde, designed by 1972 champion Bernhard Russi. Austria's Patrick Ortlieb, who had yet to win a World Cup event, won the gold medal; Franck Piccard of France was only 0.05 seconds back to take the silver, and the bronze medalist was Günther Mader of Austria. Ortlieb was first racer on the course, and he became the fifth Austrian to win the event, in its twelfth edition. Heinzer was sixth, more than a second back.

The course started at an elevation of 2809 m above sea level with a vertical drop of 973 m and a course length of 3.048 km. Ortlieb's winning time of 110.37 seconds yielded an average course speed of 99.418 km/h, with an average vertical descent rate of 8.816 m/s.

Results
The race was started at 12:15 local time, (UTC +1). At the starting gate, the skies were clear, the temperature was 5.0 C, and the snow condition was hard; the temperature at the finish was lower, at 3.0 C. Source: