Petra Kronberger
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Women's alpine skiing | ||
Representing  Austria
|
||
| Olympic Games | ||
 |
1992 Albertville | Slalom |
|
1992 Albertville | Alpine combined |
| World Championships | ||
|
1991 Saalbach | Downhill |
Petra Kronberger (born 21 February 1969 in Pfarrwerfen) is an Austrian former alpine skier, who participated in all disciplines. She was the first female alpine skier who managed to win in all five World Cup events.
Kronberger entered the World Cup circuit in the 1987/88 season. She gained several podiums and was expected to be a strong competitor at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary. She did not win any medals there, but she did give a good performance for an athlete still in her teen years: she finished sixth in the downhill and eleventh in the combined.
Kronberger only won her first World Cup events, two downhill races, in December 1989, but by the end of that season she had captured the World Cup overall title. This made her an instant hero in Austria: ever since that country's skiing star of the 1970s, Annemarie Pröll (later Moser-Pröll) had retired, the Swiss team had almost completely dominated the alpine world, which had long rankled the Austrian fans.
She successfully defended her World Cup overall champion title twice. Over the course of thirty-eight days in December 1990 and January 1991, Kronberger became the first skier in the modern era to win one race in each of the five alpine events in one season. Four of those wins in all but the combined came in the month of December alone, another notable feat.
At the 1991 World Championships she won a gold medal in her first event, the downhill, and was suspected to be able to win four more medals. However, she fell in her second event, the Super-G, and injured her right knee, forcing her to miss the rest of the races. (Despite her fall, she still finished sixth in that event.)
Her performances at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France, were even better. She won two gold medals, one in the slalom and one in the combined, and finished a respectable fourth (with only 0.01 sec. behind the podium) the Super-G, and fifth in the downhill.
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