Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Janica Kostelic made their mark on Olympic history on February 19, setting records in Sestriere and San Sicario Fraiteve. Aamodt won his gold medal in the alpine Super G, the veteran from Norway already has a total of eight Olympic medals, four gold, two silver and two bronze. Janica Kostelic is the first alpine skier to win four gold medals at the Winter Olympics.
Aamodt’s victory also makes him the first alpine skier to win Olympic medals at 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 at five editions: Georg Hackl (GER), luge, and Harri Kirvesniemi (FIN), cross-country. Seven other athletes have won medals at four different editions of the Winter Olympics
Aamodt was already the alpine skier with the most Olympic medals before his win on the 19th. He is followed in the overall men’s alpine skiing medal standings by Aberto Tomba of Italy and Lasse Kjus of Norway, who are tied with five medals each. Aamodt won his 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. She is followed by Vreni Schneider and Katja Seizinger, who won three Olympic gold medals. The record for women’s gold medals at the Winter Olympics is six with Lydia Skoblikova (URS), speed skating, and Lyubov Egorova (EUN/RUS), cross-country skiing. Two other female athletes won five gold medals.
In the past, Kostelic competed in the 1998 Nagano Olympics when he was just 16 years old, but he really broke through 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 in the combined event, winning by nearly 1½ seconds. She then finished second in the super-G, missing out on a gold medal by just five-hundredths of a second. Three days later, she beat Laure Pequegnot by seven hundredths of a second to win the slalom. Ultimately, she led both races in the giant slalom to win her third gold medal and her fourth overall medal.