Snowboarder Ester Ledecka Shocks Lindsey Vonn and the Super-G Field<br />Ledecka, currently ranked 43rd in the women’s World Cup super-G standings, outpaced a field<br />that included the American Lindsey Vonn, who was competing in the Olympics for the first time in eight years.<br />Throughout her news conference, Ledecka seemed less astounded<br />that a ski racer who splits her time on the snowboarding pro circuit could win an Olympic Alpine gold medal than her inquisitors.<br />Ledecka has won world championship medals in snowboarding but never came close to winning a World Cup ski race.<br />“I thought they were going to put a couple more seconds on my time,” Ledecka later said, laughing and well aware<br />that the race would be decided by hundredths of a second.<br />Some of her colleagues knew that Ledecka had often won sections of training runs for the super-G<br />and the downhill, the other ski event she has entered on the World Cup.<br />Ledecka, who has both an Alpine coach and a snowboarding coach, was scheduled to compete in the snowboarding parallel giant slalom next week.<br />Ledecka’s time of 1 minute 21.11 seconds was one-hundredth of a second faster – the narrowest margin of victory<br />possible in Alpine racing — than the silver medalist Anna Veith, the defending champion in the event.<br />“She could never put it all together,” Italy’s Sofia Goggia, who finished 11th Saturday, said of Ledecka.<br />Ledecka’s highest finish in a World Cup super-G before Saturday had been 19th.
