Olympic Gold Medal for Austrian Skier Matthias Mayer

Gold medalist Matthias Mayer (C) of Austria, silver medalist Christof Innerhofer (L) of Italy, and bronze medalist Kjetil Jansrud (R) of Norway celebrate during the flower ceremony after the Men`s Downhill at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Center at the Sochi 201

The first gold medal in the Sochi Olympics men's downhill race went to Austrian Matthias Mayer, Sunday.

The new champion left behind the expected leaders, recording time of 2.06,23, Bulgarian Gong reported.

Christof Innerhofer of Italy placed second, six hundredths of a second behind, and Kjetil Jansrud of Norway was third.

Although he had some success at the Super-G discipline, Mayer has never ranked in the top three for a World Cup downhill.

"This is unbelievable," he said. "I thought maybe in a few years I could dream of this sort of achievement."

The Olympic champion in Super-G in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver Aksel Lund Svindal finished fourth with 2.06,52.

Bode Miller, the world's most celebrated Alpine skier, surprisingly finished eighth in the competition.

"I'm not really sure what went wrong," Miller said. "The visibility is different today and that's the only disadvantage I had. But it's something I face all the time. If the visibility is really good, I can ski my best; if it isn't, I can't.

"I wanted to ski it as hard as I could and not really back off, but it requires a lot of tactics today, which I didn't apply."

Miller said he felt really disappointed, media reported.

Bulgarian Georgi Georgiev took the 36th place with 6.26 seconds behind Mayer and Nicola Chongarov ranked 38th with of 6.34 seconds delay.

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