Golden in 2 sports, she’s the star of these Games
BONGPYEONG, South Korea — Don’t ask Ester Ledecka if she is the best athlete at the Olympics. She will stare through her goggles and recoil at what she considers a preposterous notion.
“Uh, what?” she responded Saturday. “I don’t think so, no. There are the greatest athletes in the world here.”
And the greatest athletes in the world now gush over Ledecka, 22, a Czech who accomplished the unthinkable. She won gold medals in two sporting disciplines, shattering preconceived notions about mixing elite skiing and snowboarding. She must be the greatest. “Yeah, whatever,” Ledecka said. And then she walked away. Let’s say it for her: Ledecka is the greatest of all the greatests here. She is the defining figure of the 2018 Games.
Ledecka made parallel giant slalom snowboarding a must-see event, beating Selina Joerg of Germany by 0.46 seconds to capture a historic gold double. Last week she shocked the world and won the super-G on skis.
She has dreamed about this since she was 5. Her lifelong aspiration wasn’t simply to go to the Olympics. It was to do it her way — to compete in multiple sports, to win multiple golds — and the more she heard people say she couldn’t do it, the worse a listener she became.
In an era of specialization, Ledecka has been an evangelist for maintaining variety and a persistent self-believer. She didn’t want to hear about what was impossible. She just needed to know how difficult it would be, and then she could figure out the training and discipline the task required.
She is the first woman to win gold in two unrelated sports at the same Winter Olympics. She is only the sixth Olympian, period, to do such a thing, and most of the other multitasking medalists pulled it off back when electricity was still considered a luxury. In modern times, it just doesn’t happen.
“It’s an incredible example for young aspiring skiers, snowboarders, freestylers — anybody,” said U.S. skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin. “It’s a really important point that everybody should see: There’s not one path.
“There’s a million different ways to go about that kind of success. The one thing that does not change is perseverance and hard work. Ester was maybe the best example of that in these Games.”
Spend a lifetime hearing about what you can’t do, and you’re left with two ways to react: submit to the doubt or erase it.
“There were so many of them who tell me this is not possible,” Ledecka said. “And today, I proved it possible.”