MAKING DAD PROUD

Late-Blooming Strolz Wins Alpine Combined Gold, Repeating Father’s Feat From 1988

In a Winter Olympic first, Austrian Johannes Strolz wins gold in the same event as his father 34 years ago

Austrian skier Johannes Strolz created Olympic history today when he stormed to victory in the Alpine combined competition, 34 years after his father, Hubert, won gold in the same event at the Calgary Games. The Strolzes become the first parent-child gold medalists in Winter Olympic history—and few could have seen it coming. The 29-year-old was dropped from the Austrian World Cup team this season after years of underperforming, but decided to carry on racing anyway—waxing his own skis and working as a policeman to pay the bills. Then, out of the blue, he won a World Cup slalom at Adelboden, Switzerland, last month, the first podium of his nine-year career, and was named to the Austrian team for Beijing. Fourth-fastest after Thursday’s opening downhill, he finished half a second ahead of the field in today’s slalom, to push Norway’s Aleksander Aamodt Kilde into the silver medal spot.