Olympic debut: Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936

Number of alpine events at the 1936 Games: 2

Number of alpine events scheduled for the 2006 Games: 10

Most career alpine gold medals won by a man: 3 (Kjetil Andre Aamodt, Jean-Claude Killy, Toni Sailer and Alberto Tomba)

Most career alpine gold medals won by a woman: 3 (Deborah Compagnoni, Janica Kostelic, Vreni Schneider and Katja Seizinger)

Most career alpine medals won by a Canadian: 2 (Nancy Greene and Karen Percy)

Number of Olympic alpine medals won by Canadians: 10

First Canadian to win Olympic alpine gold: Anne Heggtveit, 1960 slalom champion

First Olympic women’s downhill winner to come from a non-German-speaking country: Canada’s Kerrin Lee-Gartner, Albertville 1992

Number of men’s downhill medals awarded in Olympic history: 46

Number of those medals not awarded to Western Europeans: 4

Number of those medals awarded to Canadians whose last name begins with ‘Pod’: 2: bronze medallists Steve Podborski in 1980 and Ed Podivinsky in 1994

Margin of victory for Henri Oreiller of France in the first Olympic downhill in 1948: 4.1 seconds

Margin of victory for Fritz Strobl of Austria in the 2002 downhill: 0.22 seconds

Alpine gold medallists hailing from Lech, Austria: 4

Population of Lech: 200

Fastest Olympic alpine skier: 1984 downhill gold medallist Bill Johnson of the U.S., whose 104 km/h average speed is the fastest in Olympic history

Slowest Olympic alpine skier: Turkey’s Resat Erces, who took 22 minutes and 44 seconds to navigate the 1936 downhill run, making for an average speed of under 9 km/h

First skier to win the same Olympic alpine event twice: Italy’s Alberto Tomba, who captured giant slalom gold in 1988 and 1992

Inventor of the aerodynamic tuck position: 1960 downhill gold medallistJean Vuarnet of France, who later started a successful sunglasses company bearing his name