SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria — Snowboarding. Snowboarding. And now windsurfing, too?
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Ester Ledecka already pulled off a surprising feat on the 2018 Winter Olympics when she claimed golds in two completely different sports activities — Alpine snowboarding and snowboarding — in Pyeongchang.
The Summer season Olympics may very well be up subsequent for the multi-talented Czech athlete.
Ledecka has already competed within the Defi Wind competitors in France and she or he is perhaps tempted to take a crack at qualifying in windsurfing for the 2028 Los Angeles Video games. She’s been windsurfing since she was 5.
“Right now it’s more of a hobby,” Ledecka stated, noting that windsurfing qualifying races happen all around the world — even through the northern hemisphere’s winter. “I am quite busy in the winter. … But yeah, why not?”
In iQFOiL windsurfing, the category used on the Olympics, sailors fly off the water pushing speeds effectively above 20 knots , their boards lifted by a foil in regattas that final about 10 minutes.
Ledecka, naturally, likes to slalom on the water. It’s the right summer season coaching for her snow sports activities.
“Especially for my snowboarding, it’s really cool for balance,” she stated, including that she additionally spends time kickboxing, biking, wakeboarding and water snowboarding within the offseason. “This all gives me a sense of the movement which I’m using on the skis as well.
“I sense so much freedom in windsurfing because there’s only the wind and me and my equipment,” Ledecka stated, earlier than outlining her most popular summer season routine: “I do all my physical training in the morning before lunch and then I just windsurf until the night.”
Dozens of athletes have competed in each the Summer season and Winter Olympics, together with American hurdler Lolo Jones in observe and bobsled. Eddie Eagan even gained gold medals in every in several occasions, first in boxing on the 1920 Antwerp Olympics after which in bobsledding on the 1932 Lake Placid Video games.
Ledecka’s number of coaching strategies might repay this week when she’ll compete within the super-G and the downhill on the Alpine snowboarding world championships. She gained the super-G ultimately season’s World Cup finals in Saalbach.
She’s additionally lodging an enchantment to the Worldwide Olympic Committee to vary the dates of considered one of her competitions at subsequent 12 months’s Milan-Cortina Olympics so she will be able to compete in each. The snowboarding parallel big slalom and the ladies’s downhill in snowboarding are scheduled to happen on the identical day in several resorts hours aside.
So are there any sports activities that Ledecka doesn’t excel at?
“I’m really terrible at golf and also I don’t really enjoy it because it’s really slow,” she stated. “I’m probably really bad in football , too. … When I try a new sport, I’m terrible at it usually, but that kind of motivates me and I am trying so hard until I make it and learn something new. But I’m terrible at sports. I mean, it’s weird to say, but I’m terrible. I mean, I’m pretty good in some, like when it’s a gliding sport, like when I can ride on something then it’s good.”
Ledecka’s father, Janek, is a well-liked singer within the Czech Republic, and she or he just lately recorded a Christmas track with a buddy of her dad’s.
“That was terrible,” she stated. “In music and the arts and everything is so complicated. … it’s quite clear. No matter how you look or what you do, just be fast.”
Nonetheless, she would possibly do one other track together with her brother.
“He’s a comic book artist and he my suits and helmets. And he also has a band. So I was thinking one day we would like to do a song together,” Ledecka stated.
However between the snowboarding, snowboarding and windsurfing, Ledecka’s profession as a recording artist is on maintain for now.
“Mick Jagger is now like 80 or something like that,” Ledecka stated of the Rolling Stones lead singer, who is definitely 81. “Yeah, I have time.”
snowboarding: /hub/alpine-skiing