Austrian shocks his rivals at Sochi
UNHERALDED Austrian Matthias Mayer upset his idols to take home gold in the blue riband event at the Winter Olympics yesterday - the men's downhill.
Twenty six years after his father Helmut won silver at the 1988 Games in Calgary in the giant slalom, Mayer claimed gold ahead of pre-race favourites American Bode Miller and world downhill champion Aksel Lund Svindal, from Norway, who finished eighth and fourth, respectively.
Mayer overcame a poor upper section to storm to gold. He clocked 2min 06.23sec down the 3.5km-long course to claim the first Austrian downhill gold since Fritz Stroebl in the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.
The 23-year-old had never won a major international downhill event but held on yesterday after earlier this week naming both Svindal and the 36-year-old Miller as his "idols and role models".
Mayer beat off the challenge of Italian Christof Innerhofer, who took silver at just six-hundredths behind, with Norway's Kjetil Jansrud a further 0.04 second adrift, taking bronze.
For Svindal and Miller, who each claimed a gold, silver and bronze at the Vancouver Games in 2010, there was disappointment.
 | |||
 |  |  | |
1. Norway | 10 | 4 | 7 |
| 2. United States | 8 | 6 | 11 |
| 3. Germany | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 4. Russia | 7 | 9 | 7 |
| 5. Canada | 7 | 9 | 4 |
| 6. Netherlands | 6 | 7 | 9 |
| 7. Switzerland | 6 | 3 | 2 |
| 8. Belarus | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| 9. France | 4 | 4 | 7 |
| 10. Poland | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| 22. Australia | 0 | 2 | 1 |
