Ester Ledecka wins downhill in Crans-Montana

Ester Ledecka is a competitive sport fascination. World leaders in two sports that are somewhat related, but are different enough that the world of sports just can’t help but be amazed. On February 8, Ledecka became the Olympic champion in the parallel giant slalom for snowboarders. She had already done that four years earlier, when no one had been faster than her in the Super-G of alpine ski racers. Ledecka managed one of the most amazing doubles in sports history in 2018. The fact that she had better conditions in Super-G than the favorites was irrelevant. At the latest with the downhill victory in December 2019 in Lake Louise, she silenced the complainers.

An Olympic confirmation of the masterpiece from Pyeongchang followed in Beijing. After winning the snowboard, Ledecka went straight back into a ski racer, and on the third day she finished fifth in the Super-G.

Now the 26-year-old Czech achieved her third World Cup victory in the Alpine category in Crans-Montana. It was the first World Cup downhill since December 2020 in which the world’s best specialist Sofia Goggia reached the finish line but did not win. A year ago, Ledecka finished second behind Goggia on the first descent on the Valais high plateau – and landed in the safety net the next day. Next to Goggia, the archetype of a daredevil, Ledecka is one of the athletes with the greatest willingness to take risks. But as a rule, she no longer thunders down to the valley carefree and headless.

Ledecka, the ski racer, is now being trained for the second winter by Franz Gamper, who previously looked after the Norwegians around Aksel Svindal. Gamper replaced the Czech Ondrej Bank, who had competed in the World Cup himself until 2016 and achieved two podium places in the combination. When Bank left Ledecka’s private team to be with his family more, Ledecka turned to Robert Trenkwalder, a renowned ski coach who has worked for Ledecka’s sponsor Red Bull for years. And Trenkwalder arranged for Gamper to join Ledecka’s supervisory staff. “I thought Robert was kidding me when he told me I could have Svindal’s ex-coach,” said Ledecka on Saturday in Crans-Montana.

Ledecka had already dreamed big as a girl, about dominating both sports, for example winning the overall World Cup in alpine skiing. But for that she would have to mutate into an all-rounder within ski racing – and almost inevitably give up snowboarding, if only because of the overlapping in the racing calendar. But Ledecka says: “I only feel complete when I do both.”