Ester Ledecká

Ester Ledecká (Czech pronunciation: [ˈɛstɛr ˈlɛdɛtskaː], born 23 March 1995) is a Czech snowboarder and alpine skier. At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Ledecká won gold medals in the super-G in alpine skiing and in the parallel giant slalom in snowboarding, becoming the first person to not only compete in the Winter Olympics using two different types of equipment (skis and snowboard) but to go further and win two gold medals and do so at the same Winter Olympics. She was the second woman to win an Olympic gold in two separate disciplines but the first to do so at the same Winter Olympics. She was the first Czech to win the parallel giant slalom in snowboarding at the FIS Snowboard World Cup.

Early life

Ester Ledecká was born in Prague, to mother Zuzana, a figure skater, and father Janek Ledecký, a well-known musician in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She comes from a sporting family: her maternal grandfather is a former ice hockey player Jan Klapáč, who was a seven-time World Championship and two-time Olympic medallist. In 2014, she was still at high school, attending a distance-learning programme in Prague.

Ice hockey was the first sport she took up as a child, before taking up skiing at the age of four and later adding snowboarding. "I was following what my brother did," Ledecká says. "He is one and a half years older than me, and so when he started with a board, I wanted to do it too. I was five years old when I started snowboarding, and I did freestyle snowboarding and boardercross until I was about thirteen years old. And again, it was my brother who started with alpine snowboarding, and I wanted to beat him, so I learned that too."

Her hobbies include playing the guitar and singing. She also enjoys participating in summer sports such as beach volleyball and windsurfing.