Janica Kostelić is one of the most successful skiers of all time. With four Olympic golds and two silvers, she is the most successful alpine skier in the history of the Winter Olympics.
She arrived in Sarajevo after a full 20 years, and at the beginning of the conversation she talked about the beginnings in the sport, which she says she did not immediately like.
“I fell in love with skiing more because of the camaraderie and friendships at the Zagreb Ski Club, than I liked it as a sport at first. Through skiing, I made many friends, and we mostly experienced training as a game in those years. Although the beginnings were a little slow, everything soon started to change and my progress was very fast. Skiing is a fun and dynamic sport in which you can never reach perfection. Over time, I I kept getting better and I started bringing medals,” said Kostelić, who first competed at the Winter Olympics as a sixteen-year-old in Nagano in 1998, when she won eighth place in the combined event.
She will point out that skiing requires countless repetitions and practice of technique, which must be done correctly, as well as that throughout her career she set goals for herself, the primary one of which was always winning an Olympic medal.
“It was always fun for me, I didn’t mind the repetitions and I always did them more than the others. If the others did 12, I would do a curve 30 times. I tried to automate my body and movements. I wanted the Olympic gold the most and to retire at the peak of my career. My motivation was never questionable, especially when I looked at the problems that some others were going through. I was motivated by small things like the starting number. If I get the starting number five, I didn’t allow myself to finish the race sixth, and the real goals came after that,” explained the trophy skier.
She points out that girls enter the serious training process of skiing faster than boys, and that she often competed with her brother Ivica, who understood skiing in a different way. Namely, while she tried to remember every detail on the track she drives, Ivica remembered fewer details, but he was always extremely competitive.
“That was my preparation for the races, I memorized everything. I competed a lot with my brother and his friends, followed him and challenged him. If I got close to him, he would immediately get serious. He was so serious that even in the warm-up, if we were playing basketball, for example, he would try to beat me. I think I benefited a lot from that in my skiing development, as well as from the slightly weaker financial situation we were in, which pushed us on a stricter training regimen,” she said.
She also referred to today’s skiers, whom she says train much more seriously than was the case in her time.
“Today, almost all skiers train very seriously, while in my time there were only a few of them who approached the sport that way,” Kostelić concluded.
(Vijesti.ba/FENA)
