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