The men's alpine skiing downhill was the third of six events of the alpine skiing programme at the 1952 Winter Olympics. It was held at Norefjell ski area on Saturday, 16 February, and started at 1 p.m. It followed the women's giant slalom on Thursday and men's giant slalom on Friday. It was the second Olympic downhill race, which was first run as a separate event in 1948. Defending world champion Zeno Colò of Italy won the gold, the only Olympic medal of his career; he was fourth in the other two events. More than a second behind was silver medalist Othmar Schneider, and Christian Pravda took the bronze. The race's starting elevation was 940 m above sea level; the course length was 2.60 km, with a vertical drop of 750 m. Colò's winning time of 150.8 seconds yielded an average speed of 62.07 km/h, with an average vertical descent rate of 4.97 m/s. Eighty-one alpine skiers from 27 nations competed.

Results

Saturday, 16 February 1952 The race was started at 13:00 local time, (UTC +1).