Ester Ledecká is a Czech athlete who competes in both snowboarding and alpine skiing. According to the Czech Olympic Committee, she is a three-time Olympic champion across the two disciplines [1].
Beginnings and snowboarding
She is the daughter of a well-known musician and a former figure skater [1]. She broke into the snowboarding elite in 2013, when she added World Cup medal placings to two junior world champion titles. In 2015 in Kreischberg she became the first Czech woman to win the senior snowboarding world championship. Soon afterwards she began to succeed markedly in alpine skiing as well [1]. On the board she has won three world champion titles and four times took the overall World Cup title in the parallel disciplines. She also holds a medal from the world championships in skiing [1].
Olympic Games
At her first Olympics, in Sochi, she had back problems, yet she still finished sixth and seventh in snowboarding [1]. At the Games in Pyeongchang she won the super-G with start number 26, which the Czech Olympic Committee counts among the biggest surprises in the history of the Winter Games. A few days later she won the snowboard parallel giant slalom and became the third athlete, and the first woman, to win in two disciplines at a single Games [1].
In Beijing in 2022 she defended her snowboarding gold. In the alpine combined she finished fourth, missing a medal place by eight tenths of a second, and in the super-G she was fifth [1][3]. In Milan and Cortina she did not manage to win a third gold on the board and finished fifth [1].
World Championships
Czech Television describes her start at the world championships in freestyle skiing and snowboarding, where she lost the parallel slalom final to Japan's Tsubaki Miki. According to the report, a mistake at the start of the race contributed to this, and Ledecká won silver [2].