The main achievements of women at the Olympics-2018
Alexandra Savina
The Olympic Games ended in Pyeongchang yesterday. This year's competition was rich in the achievements of women - from Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva from Russia, who took the Olympic medals, to the Kenyan skier Sabrina Simader, who came to the competition accompanied only by her mother and coach. We tell, to whom it is worth paying attention.
Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedev
Perhaps the most important (for Russian spectators for sure) is the confrontation of these Olympic Games: eighteen-year-old Evgenia Medvedeva and fifteen-year-old Alina Zagitova fiercely fought for the gold medal. At the competitions in Pyeongchang they set three world records in the short program at once: on February 11, Medvedev scored 81.06 points, then on February 21 she beat her own result, having already received 81.61 points - and ten minutes after that Zagitova interrupted him, receiving 82 92 points. In the end, gold still got Zagitova - Medvedeva took second place with a margin of 1.31 points. Alina is the second youngest figure skater ever to win first place in the women's single skating at the Olympics: the first was a 15-year-old American Tara Lipinski in 1998. Separately, it is worth noting the complex program Zagitova - and the corporate cascade of "triple lutz-triple rittberger."
Anna Gasser
Austrian snowboarder Anna Gasser became the first athlete in history to receive a gold medal in Big Air - discipline was included in the Olympic Games only this year. Besides him, Gasser also performs in slopestyle, but here she was less fortunate: this year she became the fifteenth. The competitions in Pyeongchang are the second Olympic Games for her: in 2014 she came to Sochi, where she also performed in slopestyle, but because of the fall she took the tenth place.
Marit Bjorgen
This year, the thirty-seven-year-old Norwegian skier Marit Bjorgen became the most titled athlete in the history of the Winter Olympics. In Phenchkhan, she won prizes in all competitions where she performed: the skier received two gold medals (relay and marathon), one silver (skiathlon) and two bronze (race for ten kilometers and team sprint). She has a total of fifteen Olympic awards: eight gold, four silver and three bronze. The previous record for the number of medals in the Winter Olympics belonged to her compatriot Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, who counted thirteen Olympic medals.
Børgeen herself plans to end her career: "When I look at what I have done, the sensations are incredible. My career has developed in an amazing way; these are my last Olympics, and to finish them like that is simply unbelievable."
Mirai Nagasu
This year, figure skater Mirai Nagasu received only a bronze medal in team competitions - but she became the first American athlete in history to complete the triple axel at the Olympics. The triple jump is one of the most difficult elements in figure skating, which is traditionally considered to be “male” (American figure skater Adam Rippon performed it twice at the same competitions). Women make it extremely rare: Japanese athletes Midori Ito and Mao Asada did it at the Olympics to Nagasu, and Tonya Harding became the first American woman to show it at international competitions. What to say - how important this event is, is understood by the face of Mirai herself after the performance.
Seun Adigun, Akuoma Omega and Ngozi Onwumere
In 2018, for the first time, Nigerian athletes competed at the Olympics - before them neither men nor women from the country participated in the Winter Games. The bobsledder country Seun Adigun, Akuoma Omega and Ngozi Onwumera represented the country - all three live in the United States, but advocate for their native country. Seun Adigun participated in the Olympics before, but in the summer: in 2012, she participated in the race for a hundred meters hurdles. The idea to organize a national team on bobsled came to her. First, all three trained on a homemade wooden bean, and then moved to a more serious level. In 2016, the team launched a crowdfunding campaign to qualify and go to the Games; they were also helped by sponsors. They did not manage to win medals in Pyeongchang, but this is not the main thing.
This is not the only female bobsledder team from a country that does not usually participate in winter competitions. This year Jamaican athletes went to the Games for the first time (Jamaica’s men's bobsleigh team participated in the Winter Olympics twenty years ago, in 1998). True, the performance was under threat: a few days before the start, the coach left the team, dissatisfied with the fact that their role in training the athletes was changed (instead of the coach they were made an analyst), and took with them the only sleigh of the team, for which bears legal responsibility. Fortunately, it all ended well: the beer company paid the Jamaican team a new bean.
Sabrina Simader
Sabrina Simader is the first female skier from Kenya to compete at the Olympics, and the only athlete to represent the country in Pyeongchang. Nineteen-year-old athlete was born in Kenya, but lives in Austria - her stepfather, the owner of the ski lift, coached her. Simader calls himself a "snow leopard" and performs at competitions in the appropriate form.
The performance of Sabrina Simader at the Olympics cannot be called successful, but this is an important moment in the history of the country and sports: before it, only one skier performed at the Olympics, Philip Boyth. In addition, unlike other teams, along with Shimader only two people went to South Korea: a mother and a coach. The athlete says she faces stereotypes, but hopes to convince everyone: “At first, people were surprised by me - okay, skiers of African descent always attract attention - but over time, when you perform better, they start to take you more seriously.”
Esther Ledetsk
Esther Ledecka from the Czech Republic became the first athlete to compete simultaneously in skiing and snowboarding. Already this would be enough to leave a mark on history, but Ledetsk went even further and took gold in two disciplines at once (again for the first time in history): February 17 for alpine skiing and February 24 for snowboarding. All this is even more impressive when you consider that Ledetsk considers himself primarily a snowboarder (although she trains for both sports) and has never won before in international ski competitions. According to the girl, she was shocked and did not expect that she would win - having learned that she was the first, she turned to her mother and asked: "How did this happen?" She went to KFC to celebrate.
“From the very beginning, many people told me:“ You cannot do both, you need to choose one thing, otherwise you will never achieve high results, ”she says.“ I answered: “No, I want to do that and to others, and if this is a problem for you, then I need another trainer - because I'm going to act like that. "
Cover: Getty images