Lucas Pinheiro Braathen won gold in the giant slalom in Milan-Cortina, becoming the first athlete to win a medal at the Winter Olympics for Brazil.
Braathen completed the two descents in 2 minutes and 25 seconds (1’13″92 in the first and 1’11″08 in the second), 58 hundredths ahead of Switzerland’s Marco Odermatt, considered the favourite to win this category, who won the silver medal. Loïc Meillard, also from Switzerland, finished third in the giant slalom.
The Brazilian athlete was the first to descend, as per the draw published a day prior to the event, setting a time that none of the 81 athletes managed to beat on their first descent, leaving him with the margin to manage his advantage in the second round.
He finished 11th in his second descent, clinching the gold medal with a marginal 0.58 second advantage over Odermatt in Bormio, Italy.
Born in Oslo to a Brazilian mother and a Norwegian father, Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, 25, earlier represented his birth country, winning World Cup medals until announcing his shock retirement in 2023.
He came out of retirement a year later, where he began to represent the yellow and green flag in 2024, to honour his mother’s heritage.
The Olympic athlete arrived at the Milano Cortina games with a streak of deri consecutive races in the top five.
Braathen’s triumph is a remarkable achievement for the South American nation, who in 102 years and 26 editions of the Winter Olympics, secured its very first medal in winter sports.
The medal also adds Brazil on an exclusive shortlist of southern hemisphere winter medal winners, with Australia (1994, 2002) and New Zealand (1992, 2018 and 2022) being the only two other southern countries on that list.
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen is set to compete again in 2026 Winter games, this time in the slalom event starting on Monday, where he has another chance of adding to Brazil’s medal tally.
Quoted from Euronews.
