Snowboarding, skiing and now windsurfing? Ester Ledecka might have a 3rd Olympic sport
SAALBACH-HINTERGLEMM, Austria (AP) — Snowboarding. Skiing. And now windsurfing, too?
Ester Ledecka already pulled off a stunning feat at the 2018 Winter Olympics when she claimed golds in two different sports — Alpine skiing and snowboarding — in Pyeongchang.
The Summer Olympics could be up next for the multi-talented Czech athlete.
Ledecka has already competed in the Defi Wind competition in France and she might be tempted to take a crack at qualifying in windsurfing for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. She’s been windsurfing since she was 5.
“Right now it’s more of a hobby,” Ledecka said, noting that windsurfing qualifying races take place all over the world — even during the northern hemisphere’s winter. “I am quite busy in the winter. … But yeah, why not?”
In iQFOiL windsurfing, the class used at the Olympics, sailors fly off the water pushing speeds well above 20 knots (37 kph or 23 mph), their boards lifted by a foil in regattas that last about 10 minutes.
Ledecka, naturally, likes to slalom on the water. It’s the perfect summer training for her snow sports.
“Especially for my snowboarding, it’s really cool for balance,” she said, adding that she also spends time kickboxing, biking, wakeboarding and water skiing in 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 said, before outlining her preferred summer 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 both the Summer and Winter Olympics, including American hurdler Lolo Jones in track and bobsled. Eddie Eagan even won gold medals in each in different events, first in boxing at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics and then in bobsledding at the 1932 Lake Placid Games.
Ledecka’s variety of training methods could pay off this week when she’ll compete in the super-G and the downhill at the Alpine skiing world championships. She won the super-G at last season’s World Cup finals in Saalbach.
She’s also lodging an appeal to the International Olympic Committee to change the dates of one of her competitions at next year’s Milan-Cortina Olympics so she can compete in both. The snowboarding parallel giant slalom and the women’s downhill in skiing are scheduled to take place on the same day in different resorts hours apart.
So are there any sports 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 said. “I’m probably really bad in football (soccer), 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 popular singer in the Czech Republic, and she recently recorded a Christmas song with a friend of her dad’s.
“That was terrible,” she said. “In music and the arts and everything is so complicated. … (In sports) it’s quite clear. No matter how you look or what you do, just be fast.”
Still, she might do another song with her brother.
“He’s a comic book artist and he (designs) 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 said.
But between the snowboarding, skiing and windsurfing, Ledecka’s career as a recording artist is on hold for now.
“Mick Jagger is now like 80 or something like that,” Ledecka said of the Rolling Stones lead singer, who is actually 81. “Yeah, I have time.”
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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing
By ANDREW DAMPF
AP Sports Writer
