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 Benjamin Raich (born 28 February 1978 in Arzl im Pitztal, Tyrol) is an Austrian alpine skier who won gold medals in the giant slalom and slalom at the 2006 Winter Olympics of Turin, Italy.
After having won Junior World Championships in both slalom and giant slalom, Raich made his debut in the Alpine Skiing World Cup in 1998, obtaining immediately a tenth place. The following year he scored his first victory, in slalom.
In 2001 he won the silver medal in Slalom at the World Championships, and at the end of the season he gained the Slalom World Cup. In 2002 he won two bronze medals at the Salt Lake City Olympics. Raich, who had matured familiary with fast specialities such as Super-G and Downhill also, in 2005 missed barely the aggregate World Cup, losing to American talent Bode Miller. In the 2005 Alpine Skiing World Championships he won a total of five medals, one for each race of the program except downhill (including also Combined, where he won a gold medal, as well as in Slalom). He is the first skier who won a Super-Combined and won the 2006 Alpine Skiing World Cup. Source: wikipedia.org - This article and images are available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. |
