Thomas Sykora (born 18 May 1968) is a former

alpine ski ''Alpine Ski'' (アルパイン・スキ一) is an alpine skiing arcade video game released by Taito in 1981. The player controls a skier on a vertically scrolling video game, vertically scrolling course who can move left, right, or increase for ...

er from

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Biography

Thomas comes from a sporting family: his father Ernst Sykora was a ski instructor, and his aunts

Liese Prokop Liesel "Liese" Prokop-Sykora (27 March 1941 – 31 December 2006) was an Austrian athlete and, later in her life, a politician. She competed mainly in the pentathlon. Biography Born as Liese Sykora in Tulln District, Lower Austria, on ...

and Maria Sykora were both successful athletes. He competed at the

1994 Winter Olympics The 1994 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XVII Olympic Winter Games (; ) and commonly known as Lillehammer '94, were an international winter multi-sport event held from 12 to 27 February 1994 in and around Lillehammer, Norway. Hav ...

and the

1998 Winter Olympics The 1998 Winter Olympics, officially known as the and commonly known as Nagano 1998 (), were a winter multi-sport event held from 7 to 22 February 1998, mainly in Nagano, Nagano, Nagano, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, with some events ...

, winning a bronze medal at the latter. Sykora won the 1996/97 and 1997/98 Slalom World Cups. Before winning these 2 World Cups, he finished second of the competition in 1994 in

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. After finishing first in the first round, he eventually was beaten by

Alberto Tomba Alberto Tomba Golden Collar of Sports Merit - Army Gold Cross of Merit (born 19 December 1966) is a former World Cup alpine ski racer from Italy. He was the dominant technical skier ( slalom and giant slalom) in the late 1980s and 1990s. At 1 ...

by 2 hundredths of a second after the second round. In total, Thomas won nine World Cup races. At the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, he won the bronze medal in slalom. In 1996 and 1999 he also became Austrian slalom champion. After numerous knee injuries, Thomas Sykora was forced to quit his career and became an

ORF ORF or Orf may refer to: * Norfolk International Airport, IATA airport code ORF * Observer Research Foundation, an Indian research institute * One Race Films, a film production company founded by Vin Diesel * Open reading frame, a portion of the g ...

commentator. He started commenting on women's races in 2000. Later, he served as commentator in important men's slaloms (Kitzbühel, Schladming). On most of the races he comments, Thomas wears a helmet with a camera to show the spectators the different routes of the slalom, and their difficulties. After the end of his active career as an athlete, he decided to study mental coaching in

Bregenz Bregenz (; ) is the capital of Vorarlberg, the westernmost states of Austria, state of Austria. The city lies on the east and southeast shores of Lake Constance, the third-largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, between Switzerland in the wes ...

; he then graduated with an MBA.

World Cup victories

Overall results

Individual victories

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sykora, Thomas 1968 births Living people Austrian male alpine skiers Alpine skiers at the 1994 Winter Olympics Alpine skiers at the 1998 Winter Olympics Olympic alpine skiers for Austria Olympic medalists in alpine skiing FIS Alpine Ski World Cup champions Medalists at the 1998 Winter Olympics Olympic bronze medalists for Austria Sportspeople from Tulln an der Donau Skiers from Lower Austria 20th-century Austrian sportsmen