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Ester Ledecka


Jack M

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Had me glued to the screen last night! An amazing feat for sure. And coached by local race legend Justin Reteir. 

I would love to be a fly on the wall with the ski racers and their coaches in that super-G as they try to figure out who the hell is Ester Ledecka? And how did a snowboarder beat the best of the best in the ski world! Amazing.

Ester L.jpg

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I think I heard it said that she had posted fastest times in various sections of the GS course and that she was known for doing that on other courses.  Like Lindsay Vonn said, "I wish I had her athleticism." She just put it all together to win the gold, much to her own amazement, by .01 ".

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What's even more amazing about her Super-G run is she was on Shiffrin's skis. I'm pretty certain I've never started a snowboard race or mountain bike race using someone else's equipment. ......, and there sure is no way I could get my foot in someone else's short track boot since I can barely get my foot in mine!....either way, wow, that's a lot of talent from that young lady.

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Unbelievable. I love to shred hills on both alpine board and skis but this is a whole different level. I feel proud as a fellow Czech and particularly happy someone showed the rest of the world that with passion, love and hard work it is possible to succeed in multiple events. Hopefully all the parents, coaches, public realize that there are more ways than the one of early specialization, whatever sport it is. I am glad she didn't listen to any of the doubtful comments throughout her life and went and proved everyone wrong. Pretty impressive for an 22 year old. Parents deserve kudos as well for supporting her the whole way. What a story, once in a lifetime.

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2 hours ago, Mike Blanz said:

What's even more amazing about her Super-G run is she was on Shiffrin's skis. I'm pretty certain I've never started a snowboard race or mountain bike race using someone else's equipment. ......, and there sure is no way I could get my foot in someone else's short track boot since I can barely get my foot in mine!....either way, wow, that's a lot of talent from that young lady.

Knowing little about it, which never causes me to keep my thoughts to myself, I believe the "won on borrowed skis" concept is pretty meaningless as these world class racers have access to whatever they want to ski or board on from the manufacturers and they have technicians who tune and adjust them for the conditions and the individual athlete, IMHO...MY $0.02 and it's worth less.

I'd wager that most of them don't even generally own their own equipment. Why would they?

The girl is good and everybody who was paying attention knew it. It was not expected that she would put together all of those fastest segments into her Olympic final...incredible, fabulous!

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17 hours ago, Ondrej said:

I feel proud as a fellow Czech and particularly happy someone showed the rest of the world that with passion, love and hard work it is possible to succeed in multiple events. 

She's getting a lot of ink because it was in the same Olympics. One of my heroes is fellow Canuck Clara Hughes who has won 6 Olympic medals, 4 in speed skating and 2 in cycling. She is constructed of 100% awesomite. 

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15 hours ago, 1xsculler said:

Knowing little about it, which never causes me to keep my thoughts to myself, I believe the "won on borrowed skis" concept is pretty meaningless as these world class racers have access to whatever they want to ski or board on from the manufacturers and they have technicians who tune and adjust them for the conditions and the individual athlete, IMHO...MY $0.02 and it's worth less.

I'd wager that most of them don't even generally own their own equipment. Why would they?

The girl is good and everybody who was paying attention knew it. It was not expected that she would put together all of those fastest segments into her Olympic final...incredible, fabulous!

As you surmise, the borrowed ski story was exaggerated. She and Shiffrin both ski on Atomic. The Atomic reps gave her skis that were prepped for Shiffrin but they were not actually Shiffrin's skis. It's not like she showed up without any gear and started begging for skis.

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1 hour ago, Neil Gendzwill said:

She's getting a lot of ink because it was in the same Olympics. One of my heroes is fellow Canuck Clara Hughes who has won 6 Olympic medals, 4 in speed skating and 2 in cycling. She is constructed of 100% awesomite. 

We have actually a similar case in Martina Sáblíková, who won I don't even know how many medals in speed skating and was one of the favourites for time trial in cycling as well, had it not been for insane screw-up of someone in Czech Cycling association, who made his own version of qualification criteria, so she was missing one race during that season and just before Rio found out she couldn't go anywhere...

But like Dave above says, mixing summer/winter is not that uncommon as you have always 2 years to prioritize one of the events. It's much harder to do it during same Olympics, because you apparently have only +- half of preparation time for each event, versus your specialized opponents.

This is by no way diminishing the accomplishments of Clara Hughes, just saying there is a difference.

 

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