Ledecka completes ‘once-
Eddie Pells
When the book is closed on these Olympics — all Olympics, really — Ester Ledecka will have her own chapter.
Though they’re both on snow, skiing and snowboarding are simply not supposed to mix. Though she could have been expected to win at one, nobody was supposed to do what she did.
The Czech speed racer did what was considered impossible a mere week ago. She nabbed the second half of an unheard-of Olympic double by winning gold in snowboarding’s parallel giant slalom on Saturday, only seven days after doing the same in skiing’s alpine super-G.
Both these sports have well-known stars that have shined brightly over the two weeks of action on the slopes in South Korea.
None have changed the conversation about what the Olympics can be in quite the manner as this softspoken 22-year-old from Prague, who insisted on wearing her goggles to the winner’s news conference, just as she did after her skiing win.
“Do whatever you want,” Ledecka said, when asked what the takeaway should be from her Olympic journey. “If you want to choose just one, choose one. I wanted to choose both, and a lot of people were telling me it’s not possible to get on the top in both. And, I mean, obviously, this. It is not easy.”
She made it look easy on the last day of competition at the action park in an event that is usually considered an afterthought on the snowboarding programme — but not this time.
This was no miracle on snow, a la her 0.01s victory in the super-G that left her stone-faced and unbelieving at the bottom of the hill, wondering if there had been some kind of mistake. Ledecka came into that event having started in only 19 World Cup skiing races in her entire career.
She came into Saturday’s event with 14 wins, 20 podiums and two world championships on the World Cup snowboarding tour. This was her day job. She made it look that way with a wire-to-wire exhibition of tight carving, perfect lines and pure domination. Nobody could have been too surprised.
In PGS, the real action occurs over four elimination rounds — one-on-one racing in which the winners advance.