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Location : Ether-Sphere Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator Humor : Über Serious
| Subject: Congratz: How snowboarder shocked the world to win skiing gold Sun Feb 18, 2018 12:58 am | |
| When she slips into the skintight suit, embellished with gold accents, gunmetal gray triangles and silver trimming, Ester Ledecka does not feel like a skier and she does not feel like a snowboarder.
“I’m a superhero,” she said.
Otherworldly powers seem the only explanation for what Ledecka did to the best skiers this world has to offer at the PyeongChang Games on Saturday.
It was a snowboarder winning an alpine skiing Olympic gold medal.
What to many in the haughty skiing world felt like a gimmick – the best parallel snowboard racer in the world trying to become the first athlete ever to compete in snowboard and ski races at the same Winter Games – birthed something far more historic.
Every bit as capable on two planks as one, Ledecka unleashed a barrage of speed on the Super-G course at Jeongseon Alpine Centre to unseat reigning gold medalist Anna Veith by a .01-second margin that left Ledecka practically paralysed with confusion. Dumbfounded, slack-jawed, numbed by what she’d done, Ledecka stared at the video board, certain something was off. US TV network NBC had cut away from the race and declared Veith the gold medalist, never considering that the 38th-ranked Super-G skier in the world whose best finish this year was 24th and who never had so much as podiumed in one of her 20 World Cup races could muster what Ledecka mustered. Neither, to be fair, did Ledecka. “I was wondering what just happened,” she said. “Is this kind of a mistake? I was thinking, ‘OK, they’re going to change the time. I’m going to wait for it a little bit. And they’re going to put some more seconds on.’
More: https://au.sports.yahoo.com/winter-games/a/39209815/winter-olympics-2018-how-ester-ledecka-won-skiing-gold/
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