Janica Kostelić (; born 5 January 1982) is a Croatian former alpine ski racer. She is a four-time Olympic gold medalist. In addition to the Olympics, she won five gold medals at the World Championships. In World Cup competition, she won thirty individual races, three overall titles, three slalom titles, and four combined titles. Kostelić's accomplishments in professional skiing have led some commentators, writers, and fellow ski racers to regard her as the greatest female ski racer of all time.
Biography
Kostelić is the only woman to win four gold medals in alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics (in 2002 and 2006), and the only woman to win three alpine skiing gold medals in one Olympics (2002).
Kostelić was the World Cup overall champion in 2001, 2003 and 2006. On 15 January 2006, Kostelić became the third woman in World Cup history (after Swede Pernilla Wiberg and Austrian Petra Kronberger) to win World Cup races in all of the sport's five disciplines. On 5 February 2006 Kostelić became the second female skier (after Petra Kronberger) to win all five disciplines in one season.
In the summer of 2006, she decided to not compete in the 2007 season, due to chronic knee and back pain. She had endured ten knee surgeries and thyroid surgery during her career. Following a year away from competition, Kostelić announced her retirement from racing in April 2007, at just 25 years old.
Since 2016, Kostelić has been the State Secretary for Science, Education and Sports in the Croatian Government.
Career
Early years
Kostelić was born in Zagreb, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, into a winter sports family. Her father Ante was also her trainer. Her older brother Ivica is a ski racer in his own right, the 2011 overall World Cup champion. She started skiing at the age of three and began training at nine years old, and quickly became successful and won several junior competitions.
At the age of 16, Kostelić was selected for the Croatian team for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Her best result was 8th place in the combined. She competed in all five disciplines. She won her first World Cup slalom in December 1999. Kostelić then suffered knee ligament damage which kept her out of competition until late 2000. She won the World Cup overall title that 2001 season with eight further victories.
2002 Winter Olympics
At the 2002 Winter Olympics she won three gold medals and a silver, the first Winter Olympic medals ever for an athlete from Croatia. No other female alpine racer has ever won four medals or three gold medals at a single Olympics.
Kostelić chose not to compete in the downhill and concentrated on the combined. She performed well in the downhill run and then won the gold medal after the two-run slalom. She then won a silver medal in the super-G, just behind Daniela Ceccarelli. The next race was the slalom, in which Kostelić won her second gold medal, narrowly beating Laure Péquegnot. Her final victory was in the giant slalom, a substantial 1.32 seconds ahead of silver medalist Anja Pärson.
Later career
Kostelić won the World Cup overall title again in 2003, but missed the following season due to knee surgery in October, her fourth in ten months, and thyroid surgery in January 2004. At the World Championships in February 2005, she won three gold medals, despite being in ill health. She won the downhill and successfully defended her world titles in slalom and combined.
{|class="wikitable"
!Season
!Date
!Location
!Discipline
|-
|rowspan=1 align=center|1999|| align=right| 17 Jan 1999 ||St. Anton, Austria ||align=center|Combined
|-
|rowspan=2 align=center|2000||align=right| 5 Dec 1999 ||Serre-Chevalier, France ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 12 Dec 1999 ||Sestriere, Italy ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|rowspan=9 align=center|2001||align=right| 18 Nov 2000 ||Park City, US ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 26 Nov 2000 ||Aspen, USA ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 10 Dec 2000 ||rowspan=2|Sestriere, Italy ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 20 Dec 2000 ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 29 Dec 2000 ||Semmering, Austria||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right rowspan=2| 14 Jan 2001 ||rowspan=2|Flachau, Austria||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=center|Combined
|-
|align=right| 26 Jan 2001 ||Ofterschwang, Germany ||align=center| Slalom
|-
|align=right| 18 Feb 2001 ||Garmisch, Germany ||align=center| Slalom
|-
|rowspan=1 align=center|2002 ||align=right| 10 Mar 2002 ||Altenmarkt, Austria ||align=center| Slalom
|-
|rowspan=6 align=center|2003 ||align=right| 23 Nov 2002 ||Park City, USA||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right rowspan=2|22 Dec 2002 ||rowspan=2|Lenzerheide, Switzerland||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=center|Combined
|-
|align=right| 29 Dec 2002 ||Semmering, Austria||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 5 Jan 2003 ||Bormio, Italy ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 13 Mar 2003 ||Åre, Sweden ||align=center|Slalom
|-
|rowspan=2 align=center|2005 ||align=right| 27 Nov 2004 ||Aspen, USA||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 27 Feb 2005 ||San Sicario, Italy||align=center|Combined
|-
|rowspan=9 align=center|2006|| 21 Dec 2005 ||Špindlerův Mlýn, Czech Rep. || align=center|Giant slalom
|-
|align=right| 14 Jan 2006 ||rowspan=2|Bad Kleinkirchheim, Austria || align=center|Downhill
|-
|align=right| 15 Jan 2006 || align=center|Super-G
|-
|align=right| 22 Jan 2006 ||St. Moritz, Switzerland||align=center|Combined
|-
|align=right| 5 Feb 2006 ||Ofterschwang, Austria||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 4 Mar 2006 ||Hafjell, Norway||align=center|Combined
|-
|align=right| 10 Mar 2006 ||Levi, Finland||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 17 Mar 2006 ||rowspan=2|Åre, Sweden||align=center|Slalom
|-
|align=right| 18 Mar 2006 ||align=center| Giant slalom
|}
World Championship results
{| class=wikitable style="text-align:center"
! Year !! Age !! Slalom !! Giant <br> slalom !! Super-G !! Downhill !!Combined
|-
| 1999 || 17 || 23 || DNF1 || 22 || 29 || 7
|-
| 2001 || 19 || 5 || DNS1 || 13 || – || —
|-
| 2003 || 21 || style="background:gold;"|1 || 13 || 19 || – || style="background:gold;"|1
|-
| 2005 || 23 || style="background:gold;"|1 || DNS1 || – || style="background:gold;"|1 ||style="background:gold;"|1
|-
|}
Olympic results
{| class=wikitable style="text-align:center"
! Year !! Age !! Slalom !! Giant <br> slalom !! Super-G !! Downhill !!Combined
|-
| 1998 || 16 || DNF1 ||24 || 26 || 25 || 8
|-
| 2002 || 20 || style="background:gold;"|1 ||style="background:gold;"|1 || style="background:silver;"|2 || — || style="background:gold;"|1
|-
| 2006 || 24 || 4 ||DNS1 || style="background:silver;"|2 ||DNS ||style="background:gold;"|1
|}
Personal life
On 1 January 2019, Kostelić gave birth to her first child.
See also
- List of multiple Olympic gold medalists
- List of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games
- Ante Kostelić
- List of FIS Alpine Ski World Cup women's race winners
- Croatian national alpine ski team