A young Ester Ledecka had heard it all before, that a real champion commits body and soul to a single sport.
She wasn't having it. And instead of following conventional wisdom, she rewrote what was possible by winning the super-G on skis and the parallel giant slalom on snowboard at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.
That made the Czech winter sports whiz the first athlete to win two gold medals in two different sports at the same Winter Olympics. Four years later, she won another gold medal in snowboard in Beijing, where she just missed the podium on skis with a fifth-place finish in super-G.
Despite a scheduling conflict that makes it impossible for her to compete in women's downhill skiing she can make some more Olympic history at the Milan Cortina Games when she goes for another double in snowboarding parallel GS and super-G on skis.
No snowboarder, not even the great Shaun White, has won the same event at three consecutive Olympics.
Ledecka, now 30, will shoot for that feat in the Italian Alps. Her final is scheduled for Feb. 8, four days before the women's halfpipe final, where Chloe Kim will go for three in a row as well.
Ledecka is in fine form after winning a recent World Cup event in snowboard PGS in Austria, her only snowboard warm-up for the Olympics this year.
“I wanted to compete in at least one (snowboard) race because the rhythm of the whole day differs from when I ski,” she told Czech media. “One is in a completely different setting, so I’m glad I tried it after a long time and we’ll see how we decide on the next races.”
Ledecka planned to compete in a World Cup super-G race at Crans-Montana in Switzerland on Saturday as a warm-up on skis before heading to the Olympics.
Ledecka has been forced to set aside the downhill at the Olympics. The schedule has the final of snowboarding’s PGS set for 1 p.m. in Livigno, Italy on Feb. 8. The women’s downhill is set to take place in Cortina at 11:30 a.m. the same day. It’s about a 4-hour drive between the two venues.
Ledecka lodged an unsuccessful appeal to the International Olympic Committee to change the event timings.
She picked snowboarding, but not before shedding some tears of frustration.
“I cried a bit few times about it, but we did the best we could,” Ledecka said in October when she announced her decision to drop downhill at the Games. “I’m the only athlete who has qualified for the event in two sports for the third time, so I was hoping that they would take that into account.”
Ledecka will be able to get over to Cortina for the women's super-G on Feb. 12.
Ledecka was as stunned as anyone when she pulled off one of the biggest surprises in Olympic history in South Korea.
Defending super-G gold medalist Anna Veith was at the bottom of slope and being congratulated by other competitors when the unheralded Ledecka, then 22, hurled herself down the super-G course.
Ledecka famously said “Is this a kind of mistake?” upon seeing her name pop up atop the timing chart, 0.01 seconds faster than Veith.
There was no error, and Ledecka followed that shocking victory days later by winning another gold on her snowboard.
Ledecka’s first sport was hockey, following in the footsteps of her grandfather, Jan Klapac, won two Olympic medals in hockey for Czechoslovakia in 1964 and 1968.
She started skiing at age 4 before switching to freestyle snowboarding and eventually alpine snowboarding and then back to alpine. She insists that skiing and snowboarding, even at the highest levels, are complementary.
As she told Olympics.com, she was stubbornly loyal to her vision of becoming an elite performer in two sports: "Since I was 14, my coaches have told me: ‘You must make a choice and blah, blah, blah.’ I’d say to them: ’I will do them both, and if that bothers you, I will find another coach because this is how it is going to be.”
AP writer Karel Janicek contributed to this report from Prague.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Czech Republic's Ester Ledecka speeds down the course during an alpine ski, women's World Cup Super G, in Crans Montana, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Pier Marco Tacca)
FILE -Gold medal winner Ester Ledecka, of the Czech Republic, celebrates after the women's parallel giant slalom at Phoenix Snow Park at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
NASHVILLE (AP) — A powerful storm bore down on the East Coast on Saturday, with forecasters warning of howling winds, flooding and heavy snow, including in some Southeast coastal communities more accustomed to hurricanes than blizzards. Temperatures plummeted even as tens of thousands of homes and businesses remained without power.
In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — whose official seal is the sun, palm trees and a seagull — 6 inches (15 centimeters) of snow was expected. The city has no snow removal equipment, and authorities planned to “use what we can find,” Mayor Mark Kruea said.
Subfreezing weather was forecast into February, with heavy snow in the Carolinas, Virginia and northeast Georgia over the weekend including up to a foot (30 centimeters) in parts of North Carolina. Snow was also said to be possible from Maryland to Maine.
Saturday night and early Sunday, forecasters said, wind and snow could lead to blizzard conditions before the storm moves out to sea.
The frigid cold was expected to plunge as far south as Florida.
Temperatures neared the teens (minus 10 Celsius) in Nashville, Tennessee, and frustrations bubbled up for those who spent a week without power.
Terry Miles, a 59-year-old construction worker whose home has had no electricity since a previous storm struck Sunday, resorted to using a fish fryer for heat and worried about the danger of carbon monoxide.
“I’m taking a chance of killing myself and killing my wife, because — Why?” Miles said after attending a Nashville Electric Service news conference intended to showcase the utility’s repairs on poles and lines. He then pointed to officials.
More than 170,000 homes and businesses were without electricity, mostly in Mississippi and Tennessee, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us. That included more than 57,000 in Nashville as of Friday night.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he shared “strong concerns” with leadership of Nashville Electric Service, adding that residents “need a clear timeline for power restoration, transparency on the number of linemen deployed, and a better understanding of when work will be completed in their neighborhood.”
The utility has defended its response, saying the storm that struck last weekend was unprecedented.
Mississippi officials said the massive winter storm was its worst since 1994. About 80 warming centers were opened, and National Guard troops delivered supplies by truck and helicopter.
Experts warned of the growing risks of hypothermia. Frostbite was also a concern in the South, where some people may lack sufficiently warm clothing, said Dr. David Nestler, an emergency medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
More than 100 people have died from Texas to New Jersey, roughly half of them in Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. While some deaths have been attributed to hypothermia, others are suspected to be related to carbon monoxide exposure. Officials have not released specific details about some deaths.
In North Carolina, hundreds of National Guard soldiers readied to help and state workers worked to prepare roads.
The city of Wake Forest saw a steady stream of people filling propane tanks Friday at Holding Oil and Gas, including José Rosa, who arrived after striking out at three other places.
“I’m here in this cold weather, and I don’t like it,” Rosa said as he held a 20-pound (9-kilogram) tank.
In Dare County, home to much of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, residents worried that more unoccupied houses in communities like Rodanthe and Buxton could collapse into the Atlantic Ocean.
Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Jonathan Mattise and Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; Allen G. Breed in Wake Forest, North Carolina; Sarah Brumfield in Washington; David Fischer in Fort Lauderdale; Devi Shastri in Milwaukee and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
Hunter Steffen, 17, left, hands a hard-to-come by 40-pound bag of ice melt to a customer outside Town & County Hardware in Wake Forest, N.C., on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
Tennessee National Guard Specialist Taylor Osteen, left, holds a chainsaw as he takes a break from cutting trees from a road Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Ethan Green, 21, left, an apprentice one lineman at the Yazoo Valley Power Association, looks up at a crew member Taylor Arinder on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026 in Bentonia, Miss. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)
Tennessee National Guard members Taylor Osteen, left, and Antuwan Powell walk along an ice covered road as they work to remove trees Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Austin Bradbury uses a chainsaw to remove a tree above a road Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
