Spend some time surfing down Ester Ledecka's biography and you'll find that the 26-year-old Olympic snowboarder and skier enjoys beach volleyball, windsurfing, and playing guitar.
The natural follow-up thoughts go something like this:
- "So when is she going on tour and what's the name of her band?"
- "Is she more like Barbara Hermannova or Marketa Slukova on the sand?"
- "Windsurfing?!?"
This superstar, make no mistake about it, takes renaissance woman to a snow new level.
We're talking about winter's Bo Jackson or a new-age Dave and Dan, except one person.
So...Ester and Ester.
The defending gold medalist in snowboarding parallel giant slalom is now locked-in on defending gold in alpine skiing's super-G, and at some point, perhaps, we might get a glimpse of a human being (or extra-terrestrial, whatever's happening here) who understands how special of a show she's putting on the world's stage.
Heck, Ledecka doesn't quite sound like a person who realizes she's gone from practice runs to the Olympic podium.
"I was so concentrated until the end that I didn't even know if we had to go up one more time or not, so I was not celebrating it at all," Ledecka said after taking snowboard gold. "It's still not sunken in … I'm super happy, but in my head I'm just still a little bit in the race."
Ledecka's back at it Thursday in the women's super-G and then Monday hits the slopes for downhill skiing. Perhaps we should petition to have a camera crew follow her around Friday, Saturday, and Sunday just in case she messes around and masters chess or something.