3 things you need to know about the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history
By Zach Bigalke
Ester Ledecka’s victory in the women’s Super-G is the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history. Here is the story behind the Czech skier’s Olympic feat.
On Saturday in Pyeongchang, Czech skier Ester Ledecka pulled off the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history. Neither the commentators calling the race on the hot feed nor Ledecka herself could believe that she had won. Ledecka crossed the finish line 0.01 seconds faster than Anna Veith.
By the time the final skier had crossed the line, Ledecka’s miraculous finish stood as the gold-medal performance. In the process, the Czech prodigy ended Austria’s streak of four straight gold medals in the women’s Super-G at the Olympics.
Ledecka was a longshot skier who pulled off the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history. It wasn’t just a major upset on an Olympian scale. The Czech star beat the world’s best Super-G specialists at their own game on the biggest possible stage, and her background makes the victory all the more shocking.
What qualifies Ledecka’s win as the greatest upset ever on the slopes? Let’s look at a couple of the major components that explain why this year’s Olympic women’s Super-G featured the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history.
1. Ledecka is a champion snowboarder.
Ledecka is just 22 years old, but she is already a two-time world champion — as a snowboarder. She won the world title in the parallel slalom as a 19-year-old breakout star at the FIS snowboarding world championships in Kreischberg, Austria in 2015. Two years later in Sierra Nevada, Spain, Ledecka settled for silver in the parallel slalom but won gold in the parallel giant slalom.
Ledecka started skiing just two years ago on the FIS World Cup circuit. Her first race came in Germany in February 2016. She has done better in downhill than in Super-G on the circuit. In every case, though, she has been far more notable for her snowboarding exploits than her Alpine skiing.
She has steadily been in the high 30s or low 40s in the World Cup Super-G standings. Entering the 2018 Winter Olympics, Ledecka had never even put up a top-15 finish on the circuit. This season, she was ranked No. 44 at St. Moritz in December, her only World Cup event so far this year. Her best finish ever came at Lake Louise, Alberta in Dec. 2016 when she came in 19 in the first race of her first full World Cup season.
Ledecka wasn’t merely a dark-horse in the event. She was nowhere on anybody’s radar heading into the event. The young Czech star won the first gold medal ever by the Czech Republic in Alpine skiing.
2. Ledecka won on secondhand skis.
The top skiers on the World Cup circuit are sponsored by the ski companies. Every year, the stars get the newest skis and gear from their sponsors. For the rest of the skiers that fill out the fields at World Cup events, however, the onus to obtain equipment is often on their own shoulders.
For Ledecka, like many others, that means forging friendships and snagging last year’s gear from the superstars when the new shipments arrive from sponsors. When Ledecka won the Czech Republic’s first-ever Olympic gold in Alpine skiing, she did so on hand-me-down skis from American star and Olympic giant slalom gold medalist Mikaela Shiffrin.
Shiffrin wasn’t in the event, but her old skis proved magical for Ledecka on the Olympic stage. Ledecka navigated the course on the best run yet of her burgeoning career. No matter what happens from here, though, the secondhand skis will remain part of the legend of the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history.
3. Ledecka could still win gold — and make history — a second time.
In the second week at the Olympics, Ledecka shifts her focus from Alpine skiing to the snowboarding events. She will be tackling the parallel giant slalom with the goal of adding Olympic gold to her current hold on the FIS world championship.
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Ledecka is the first-ever athlete to compete in Alpine skiing and snowboarding events in a single Winter Olympics. In an era of heightened specialization among athletes in all fields, Ledecka showed that diversifying one’s talents is indeed possible.
Athletic talent runs in Ledecka’s family. Her maternal grandfather, Jan Klapac, is a former Olympic silver and bronze medalist. Klapac competed for the Czechoslovak hockey team in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Ledecka already has one more gold medal than her grandfather, and could match his career number of medals with a podium finish in the parallel giant slalom.
If Ledecka successfully makes the top step of the parallel giant slalom podium and snags gold on her snowboard, it will make a historic Olympic performance even more historic. But the FIS World Cup leader will be a favorite to claim a top-three finish in the event. As such, a win will hardly be the greatest upset in snowboarding history. It certainly won’t be as shocking as her Super-G win, the biggest upset in Alpine skiing history.
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