Brazil won this Saturday (14) the first medal in history at a Winter Olympics – and right from the start it was gold. The person who reached the highest place on the podium was Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, who won the men’s alpine skiing final – giant slalom.
In the decision, Braathen totaled 2:25.00 in the sum of the two descents. The Swiss Marco Odermatt, with 2:25.58 and Loic Meillard, with 2:26.17 took silver and bronze, respectively. Odermatt was coming off gold at the Beijing 2022 games.
The Brazilian had already led the first descent with a time of 1:13.92, beating three rivals from Switzerland: Marco Odermatt (1:14.87), Loic Meillard (1:15.49) and Thomas Tumler (1:15.81). With that, he guaranteed a good advantage for the second descent.
Until then, Brazil’s best performance at the Winter Olympics had come in the Turin edition, in 2006, when Isabel Clark won Final C of the women’s snowboard cross and came in ninth place. Until then, this had also been Latin America’s best result at a Winter Olympics.
Born in Oslo, son of a Norwegian father and Brazilian mother, Lucas had already represented Brazil in Beijing-2022, but suffered an accident on the first descent of the men’s slalom final. He was only the second skier from outside Europe to win gold in the event. In 2014, North American Ted Ligety took the highest place on the podium.
