Axel May, edited by Gauthier Delomez with AFP
, modified to
07:16, February 07, 2022
The 41-year-old French skier Johan Clarey won the second medal for the tricolor delegation, the second in silver, in the men’s downhill event at the Beijing Winter Olympics. With a time of 1’42″77, the Frenchman finished second behind the Swiss Beat Feuz.
Swiss Beat Feuz won the 2022 Olympic Games downhill at the age of 34 on Monday in Yanqing, ahead of Frenchman Johan Clarey, who at 41 became the oldest Olympic medalist in alpine skiing in history. Feuz beat Clarey by 10/100th and Austrian Matthias Mayer by 16th/100th to win the most important title of his career. He had won the bronze medal in the downhill four years ago and the silver in the super-G. He has a world title in 2017 at home in Saint-Moritz in the queen event, the last four globes of the downhill World Cup, as well as sixteen victories on the world circuit.
At 41, Johan Clarey is the oldest Olympic medalist in history
Clarey, already 2nd behind Feuz in January during one of the two descents of Kitzbühel, clearly broke the previous longevity record for an Olympic medalist, held until then by the American Bode Miller who was 36 years old when he won the bronze of the super-G in 2014. The Norwegian Alexander Aamodt Kilde, big favorite of this descent, finished in 5th place, 51/100th behind the new Olympic champion.
The downhill of the 2022 Olympics, the first alpine skiing event of the Olympic fortnight, was initially scheduled for Sunday, but had been postponed to Monday due to strong winds. It took place on a 3 km ribbon of artificial snow, winding between the rocks and bushes of an arid massif, in a country that had never hosted an international alpine ski event.