Her mind raced through the difficult path she had to take in the past two years. A broken collarbone didn’t seem like an injury that would put her out for an entire skiing winter. But she required two operations and the three-time Olympic champion was glad to have managed at least two snowboard races.
And when she was finally able to break into the ranks of elite skiers, she struggled with her health. Almost the entire first half of the season. It wasn’t until the end of winter that she could fully remember what she could do when she was at full strength.
“Each winning race was a little different. With what the last winter was like, actually just a short snowboarding one, and how the start of the current one was, when I was sick and the whole team was really struggling,” she reminded that proper preparation was out of the question in case of lingering respiratory problems.
“When I went up the hill, it wasn’t about training, but more about if I could at least manage to ride that one race,” she recalled. Even so, she couldn’t complete all the snowboarding and skiing events she had planned.
But gradually she gained strength. She won on the snowboard, moving higher and higher among female skiers. At the end of the season, she reached the very top.
“Everyone was patient and supported me. We have shown that we are not only among the top in snowboarding, but also among the top in skiing,” she was delighted after another season when she managed to win the World Cup race in both of her sports.
After all, even her snowboard coach Justin Reiter watched the winning ride directly in Saalbach and added their favorite message to the photo of his star protégé: “Good for the snowboarder.”
There were a lot of Czech flags in the audience, as well as Ledecka’s closest ones. “My mother was there with Janko and (the manager) Erika, who doesn’t go otherwise, so I’m very glad that she could come. And I really enjoyed the ride, I enjoyed it from the first gate to the last,” she boasted after her third major super-G victory of her career.
The memorable first came at the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang six years ago, the second in December 2020 in Val d’Isere. Combined with snowboarding, he already has 28 wins in the World Cup, ski podiums rounded to ten.
In Salbach, she received congratulations not only for the victory, but also for her 29th birthday on Saturday. She gave herself a great gift, is there anything that could beat it? “I have a little idea what could come out on top tomorrow,” she laughed, referring to Saturday’s descent (from 11:15 a.m.), the final race of the season.
2024-03-22 17:07:19
#happy #beamed #Ledecka #trump #win #idea
