Carlo Janka

Carlo Janka

Disciplines	Downhill, Super G Giant Slalom, Slalom, Combined
Club	Obersaxen
Born	October 15, 1986 (1986-10-15) Obersaxen, Graubünden, Switzerland
Height	1.86 m (6 ft 1 in)
World Cup debut	December 21, 2005 (age 19)
Olympics
Teams	1 - 2010
Medals	1 (1 gold)
World Championships
Teams	2 - (2009-11)
Medals	2 (1 gold)
World Cup
Seasons	6
Wins	8
Podiums	16
Overall titles	1 - (2010)
Discipline titles	1 - (2009 - SC)
Medal record Men's alpine skiing Competitor for Switzerland Olympic Games Gold 2010 Vancouver Giant slalom World Championships Gold 2009 Val d'Isère Giant slalom Bronze 2009 Val d'Isère Downhill

Carlo Janka (born October 15, 1986) is a champion alpine ski racer from Switzerland. Born in Obersaxen in the canton of Graubünden, he had the winter sports facilities right in front of his home. Janka has won gold medals at both the Winter Olympics and the World Championships, as well as one World Cup overall title and one discipline title.

Ski racing career

Janka competed in his first international FIS race in December 2001 at age 15. Not until four years later did he reach the podium, but success came in all four disciplines. Janka began racing on the Europa Cup circuit in January 2004. He earned his first two World Cup starts in December 2005, but did not finish either race. At the 2006 Junior World Championships in Mt. Ste. Anne, Quebec, Canada, he won the bronze medal in giant slalom, and he finished the 2007 season in fourth place in the overall Europa Cup standings.

Janka scored his first World Cup points in the giant slalom at Alta Badia, Italy, on December 17, 2006, finishing in 20th place. But his World Cup breakthrough began two years later, on November 29, 2008, when he came out of the 65th starting position to finish a surprising second place in the downhill at Lake Louise. Two weeks later, on December 13, he skied to his first World Cup victory in a giant slalom race at Val d'Isère, France, followed the next month by a victory in the Lauberhorn super-combined in Wengen. A month later, he won the gold medal in giant slalom and the bronze in downhill at the 2009 World Championships in Val d'Isère.

On the weekend of December 4–6, 2009, Janka achieved a remarkable feat by winning the super-combined, downhill, and giant slalom on the challenging Birds of Prey course at Beaver Creek, Colorado. Janka was the first skier to win three World Cup races in a single weekend since Hermann Maier at the same location ten years earlier on the 2000 World Cup tour. On the same weekend as Janka triumphed in Beaver Creek, Lindsey Vonn almost duplicated the feat on the women's tour at Lake Louise, winning two races and narrowly missing a third win. On January 16, 2010, Janka won the Lauberhorn downhill in Wengen, the longest and fastest race on the World Cup tour, a day after nearly repeating his 2009 win in the super-combined by narrowly placing second behind Bode Miller.

On February 23, 2010, Janka won the gold medal in the giant slalom at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics at Whistler Creekside in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.

At the World Cup finals in Garmisch, Germany, in March 2010, he became the fourth Swiss racer to win the World Cup overall title. He clinched the title by winning the downhill and giant slalom, which left his nearest opponent, Benjamin Raich, 106 points back with one race remaining, an insurmountable margin.

Following the 2011 World Championships, Janka underwent surgery due to increased symptoms from heart arrhythmias. A radio frequency catheter intervention was done on February 23, interrupting accessory electrical pathways to the heart. These unnecessary extra pathways had caused his heart rate to behave abnormally during exercise and stress, posing possibly severe risks. Janka recovered well from the catheterization and resumed training five days later, winning the giant slalom at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia on March 5 for his first victory of the World Cup season.

World Cup victories

Season titles

Season	Discipline
2009	Combined
2010	Overall

Race victories

9 race victories - (3 downhill, 4 giant slalom, 2 combined)

Season	Date	Location	Race
2009	13 Dec 2008	Val d'Isère, France	Giant Slalom
	16 Jan 2009	Wengen, Switzerland	Super Combined
2010	04 Dec 2009	Beaver Creek, USA	Super Combined
	05 Dec 2009		Downhill
	06 Dec 2009		Giant Slalom
	16 Jan 2010	Wengen, Switzerland	Downhill
	10 Mar 2010	Garmisch, Germany	Downhill
	12 Mar 2010		Giant Slalom
2011
	05 Mar 2011	Kranjska Gora, Slovenia	Giant Slalom

External links

• Carlo Janka at the International Ski Federation
• FIS-ski.com - World Cup season standings - Carlo Janka
• Ski-db.com - results - Carlo Janka
• skionline.ch - Carlo Janka's blog - (German)
• Biography from Skionline.ch (German)