Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Janica Kostelic made their mark in Olympic history on February 19, setting records at Sestriere and San Sicario Fraiteve. Aamodt achieved his gold medal in the Alpine Super G, the Norwegian veteran now has a total of eight Olympic medals, four gold, two silver and two bronze. Janica Kostelic is the first alpine skier to achieve four gold medals at the Winter Olympics.
Aamodt’s victory also makes him the first alpine skier to win Olympic medals in four different editions of the Games: Albertville 1992, Lillehammer 1994, Salt Lake City 2002 and Torino 2006. So far, only two athletes have won Olympic medals in five editions: Georg Hackl (GER), luge and Harri Kirvesniemi (FIN), cross-country skiing. Seven other athletes have won medals in four different editions of the Winter Olympics.
Aamodt was already the alpine skier with the most Olympic medals before his victory on the 19th. He is followed in the general ranking of men’s alpine skiing medals by Aberto Tomba from Italy and Lasse Kjus from Norway, who are tied with five medals each. Aamodt won her first Olympic gold medal at the Albertville Winter Games in 1992.
Janica Kostelic’s Olympic record is being the first alpine skier to win four gold medals at the Winter Olympics. They are followed by Vreni Schneider and Katja Seizinger, who won three Olympic gold medals. The women’s gold medal record at the Winter Olympics is six with Lydia Skoblikova (URS), speed skating, and Lyubov Egorova (EUN / RUS), cross-country skiing. Two other athletes won five gold medals.
In the past, Kostelic competed in the Nagano Olympics in 1998 when he was only 16 years old, but he really did it in the 2000-2001 season, when he won the overall World Cup title with 1,256 points that season. Her country honored her by making her the first athlete to appear on a Croatian postage stamp. During the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, Kostelic had an incredible ten days.
She posted the fastest time in each of the three races of the combined event, winning by nearly 1½ seconds. She then finished second in super-G, losing a gold medal by just five hundredths of a second. Three days later, he beat Laure Pequegnot by seven hundredths of a second to win the slalom. Ultimately, she led both giant slalom races to earn her third gold medal and fourth overall medal.