In the hotel room in the mountains near the competition hill in Yanqing, she couldn't sleep. It was the night of February 7, 2022. It felt unbearable. Nervousness twisted through her mind. Performance anxiety was grinding. Sleepless, she tossed and turned. Hector later said she felt really bad.
A few hours later, she crossed the finish line as the first Swede to win an Olympic giant slalom since Pernilla Wiberg in 1992.
Not everyone gets the chance to win a second consecutive Olympic gold medal in their sport. Even fewer do.
Hoping for a quieter night
When Hector throws herself down the piste in Cortina on Sunday, she hopes the night has been calmer, but telling herself things doesn't guarantee it will be. She says that before every competition there is pretty much the same tension. Now as then, as always. But she says she has become a little calmer over the years. She can better face her fear, more easily control her stress.
She is most successful in that area when the form is there.
It depends on what phase you're in: how the training has gone, how satisfied you are with everything. I think that affects it quite a lot.
Hector came to the Olympics with a victory in Spindleruv Mlyn at the end of January.
I don't know if it makes that much of a difference, but it's clear that generally feeling like I've had a high capacity lately feels good.
Overall, I'm in a pretty good place in life right now and I want to go here and have fun. But then, doing an Olympics is not exactly stress-free. We'll see if I can play my cards right.
“Not a matter of life and death”
Sara Hector's sport has been her profession since her debut in the World Cup in 2009. She was 17 at the time. She will soon be 34. Has her approach to work changed?
It's probably impossible that it hasn't. But somewhere... I still feel like skiing isn't my job, because I love it so much.
I really love the sporting part. It's really luxurious to work with what you're passionate about. Always trying to get better at what I do is fun, especially when you can learn new things.
It's important that it's a little playful. It's not that way all the time for me these days. Everything gets so serious, but please, sports are sports. It's not politics and I'm not going to operate on anyone's heart. It's not a matter of life and death.
