Mayer wins men's downhill gold medal

Austrian Matthias Mayer stormed to victory in the men's Olympic downhill as favourites Bode Miller and Aksel Lund Svindal missed out on a medal. Mayer, 23, competing in his first Olympics, went one better than his father Helmut who won silver in Super-G at the Calgary Games in 1988. He clocked two minutes 06.23 seconds down one of the most challenging and certainly the longest Olympic downhill course ever to beat Italy's Christof Innerhofer by 0.06secs. Norway's Kjetil Jansrud wathird, 0.10 secs adrift, with World Cup downhill leader Svindal 0.29secs back in fourth. American Miller, 36, bidding for a sixth Olympic medal and second gold, was fastest in two of the three training runs on the steep, icy track above Rosa Khutor village but was unable to replicate his pace on an overcast race day and finished eighth. "I was looking to win and I thought I had a good chance at it and I was well prepared, so it's tough when things don't go your way," said Miller, who won downhill bronze in Vancouver four years ago. "It was one of those days, I skied pretty well and was pretty aggressive and took a lot of risks. "I made a couple of small mistakes but not the sort of mistakes that cost you a lot of time.