A world champ snowboarder on borrowed skis won the Olympics’ most stunning gold

And U.S. skier Mikaela Shiffrin helped.

Ester Ledecka didn’t believe it.

“Is this a kind of mistake?”

After all, the 22-year-old from the Czech Republic didn’t even own the skis she was on. She had borrowed them.

”How did that happen?”

Besides, she was a world champion snowboarder. Her time of 1:21.11 in the alpine skiing super-G couldn’t be right.

“OK, they’re going to change the time. I’m going to wait for a little bit, and they’re going to switch and [add] some more seconds on.”

No seconds were added. No timing mistakes had been made.

In what may prove to be the most stunning result of the 2018 Winter Olympics, Ledecka had won gold in the women’s super-G. She edged defending gold medalist Anna Veith from Austria by 0.01 seconds. She finished ahead of Lindsey Vonn, who ended up tied for sixth place after a late mistake in her run on Saturday. She did all this on a pair of skis borrowed from U.S. skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who dropped out of the event because high winds had compressed the alpine schedule in South Korea.

“They were a little bit in shock,” Ledecka said of her competitors, as she talked to reporters about everything going through her mind immediately after reaching the bottom of the course, via The Associated Press. “They were staring at me a little bit.”

Because Ledecka is a world champion snowboarder.

In 2017, she became the first person to compete in world championships in both skiing and snowboarding. As a snowboarder, she won gold in the parallel giant slalom and silver in the parallel slalom. As a skier, she didn’t finish higher than 20th in the downhill (21), combined (20), super-G (29), or giant slalom (37).

At the 2018 Winter Olympics, she skied her way to gold. Up next, she’ll participate in the women’s parallel giant slalom on her snowboard.

“All I can say is I wish I had as much athleticism as she does to be able to win at two sports in the same Olympics, because I’m only good at one sport, and that’s ski racing,” said Vonn, via Team USA. “So the fact that she’s able to beat all of us and be a snowboarder is pretty darn impressive.”

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