Petra Vlhová of Slovakia celebrates during the medal ceremony after winning the gold medal in the women's slalom at the 2022 Winter Olympics. (source: AP/TASR)
Slovakia’s skier Petra Vlhová won the first medal for her country at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.
She dominated women’s slalom race, moving to the first place after finishing eighth in the first run.
Katharina Liensberger of Austria ended second (+0.08 s) and Wendy Holdener of Switzerland third (+0.12 s).
When Vlhová found out that she is an Olympic winner, she ran to see her team and celebrated with them.
"Every member of the team believed me. Even at home, everyone believed in me. I showed that I am a great warrior. I put everything I had in the race and in the end, I won the Olympic Games," she said emotionally, as quoted by the Sportnet daily.
She reached such success in conditions that do not suit her well. In the first round, she suffered and ended up eighth.
She was losing 72 hundredth of a second on the leader Lena Dürr.
“It is hard for me to evaluate because 0.72 second is quite a bit,” she said for RTVS. “Honestly, I suffer in this snow. With the fact that I ride aggressively, with large power, I needed to change my skiing,” she said.
The big surprise was the elimination of Mikaela Shiffrin who did not finish her strongest discipline.
Pini: She gave her big heart to it
Vlhová realised before the second ride that she had to pull off the ride of her life, maybe the best in her career.
Her Swiss coach Mauro Pini significantly helped her with it. He built the track of the second run.
“Amazing, amazing second round,” Pini said cheerfully, as quoted by Sportnet.
“I tried to build several combinations and increase the level for racers,” he noted. “Petra won because she was not afraid. She is a fighter; I have always said that. She put her big heart into it, she wanted to win this race.”
On the question of a reporter, that the aggressive snow does not suit Vlhová, he answered diplomatically, “The fact that this snow does not suit her is not important. She is an Olympic winner.”
