On borrowed skis, Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecká won Olympic super-G gold by just 0.01 seconds at the Jeongseon Alpine Centre.
A charge from bib 26
The race looked over when Austria's Anna Veith, the defending champion, posted 1:21.12 from start number 15. Race agencies began naming her the winner. Then Ledecká, ranked 43rd in the World Cup, pushed off in the 26th position — outside the top-20 slots reserved for contenders.
She took an aggressive line others avoided. She nearly crashed landing the final jump but recovered to cross in 1:21.11.
A clock she refused to trust
At the finish, the green light showed she had edged Veith by one hundredth. Ledecká stood still, staring at the scoreboard. "I was wondering what just happened," she told reporters.
The bronze-medal margin was just as tight. Tina Weirather took third for Liechtenstein by the same one hundredth over Lara Gut, securing her country's first Olympic medal since 1988.
The first of two golds in one Games
The result gave the Czech Republic its first Olympic alpine skiing title. Ledecká raced on skis borrowed from American Mikaela Shiffrin. A week later, she won snowboard parallel giant slalom gold, becoming the first athlete to win two different sports at the same Winter Games.
She would go on to medal at both alpine and snowboard World Championships in a single season. But nothing matched the cold afternoon when a clock she mistrusted finally told her the truth.
