Two gold medals awarded in Olympic downhill

SOCHI, Russia, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Downhill skiers Tina Maze of Slovenia and Dominique Gisin of Switzerland produced the first gold medal tie Wednesday in the history of Olympic alpine skiing.

After Maze and Gisin hurtled down the side of a mountain at 100 kilometers an hour, the state-of-the-art timing device used to track their progress came up with the same time for both of them down to a hundredth of a second.

They were both timed in 1 minute, 41.57 seconds. This was the 135th alpine skiing event contested in the Olympics since 1936 and it was the first time two gold medals had been awarded in the same race.

Lara Gut of Switzerland took the bronze, finishing a 0.1 second behind the co-winners.

Maze is in fifth place in the World Cup downhill standings this season and Gisin is ninth. It was the third Olympic medal in Maze's career and she gave Slovenia its first gold of these Games.

Julia Mancuso, who would have equaled Bode Miller for the most alpine medals ever for an American had she won one in this event, finished eighth. She has four Olympic medals, having won a bronze earlier in these Games in the combined event.

World Cup downhill leader Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany, winner of the combined, wound up 13th.