Feuz wins men's downhill at Beijing Winter Olympics

YANQING - Beat Feuz of Switzerland on Monday finally won the elusive Olympic men's downhill gold to add to his impressive collections of achievements.

The 34-year-old Swiss racer clocked 1 minute 42.69 seconds, 0.1 seconds ahead of France's Johan Clarey. Austria's Matthias Mayer took the bronze in 1:42.85.

Four-time reigning World Cup downhill champion Feuz, who was placed second at this winter's World Cup rankings, won a silver medal in super-G and bronze in downhill four years ago at the PyeongChang games.

"A dream came true," Feuz said after the race.

"The Olympics are a big thing, and today it worked for me. In (PyeongChang) four years ago I was second and third, but today everything came together. It means the world to me," he said.

"I can't think of anything more beautiful than flying home with a gold medal around my neck," said the Swiss.

Pre-race favorite Aleksander Aamodt Kilde of Norway, who leads the World Cup overall rankings, fell short of expectations and finished fifth in 1:43.20.

"I simply just losing too much time on the lower pitch, and that's unfortunate. I had high expectations of myself today, but it didn't go 100% as planned," he said.

The Norwegian racer said he did not ski well in the second half of the race.

"That's where I felt I was losing my momentum a little bit, because I felt like I skied the middle part pretty good, and then I came into the last pitch and I was stuck on my edge for a couple of turns," he said.

"That's a bad feeling because then you kind of hang in there instead of being on top of things," Kilde said.