A course worker removes a flag from a gate on the men's downhill course after race was postponed due to high winds at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 6, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing.Alessandro Trovati/The Associated Press
The Olympic men’s downhill was postponed Sunday because of high winds at the venue.
No new date was immediately announced. The 11 a.m. race start was delayed three hours before it was called off.
The first women’s race – the giant slalom – is scheduled for Monday.
At the top of the speed course, known as The Rock, the wind gusted to 60 kilometres per hour Sunday.
The men’s third and final training run Saturday was cancelled because of wind after three skiers went down the course, but the men got two training runs in earlier in the week.
No international racers had seen the course until Thursday’s first training session. Pre-Olympics test events were scrapped because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Toronto’s James Crawford and Broderick Thompson and Brodie Seger of Whistler, B.C., will represent Canada in men’s downhill.
Thompson was third-fastest in the second training run and Crawford was fifth in the first. Crawford has a No. 2 start bib, Seger starts 26th and Thompson 28th.
A Canadian man has never won Olympic downhill gold. Steve Podborski (1980) and Edi Podivinsky (1994) were bronze medallists.
With files from The Associated Press.