Olympic champion Sara Hector: 'I really like to be happy'

What a difference an Olympic cycle can make. Four years ago Sara Hector was tenth in the giant slalom at PyeongChang 2018 and had to fight back the tears on Swedish TV.

Fast forward to Beijing 2022 and she was standing top of the giant slalom podium wearing gold.

It was a gruelling GS that saw over a third of the racers record a DNF - including Mikaela Shiffrin - and Hector just managed to hold on by 0.28 seconds after Run 2, having clocked the fastest time on Run 1.

Italy’s Federica Brignone won silver and Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami wore bronze.

"I'm so proud, I can't put it into words," Hector said post race. "I really tried to push it and give it all I got. It's just amazing."

At 29, Hector became the first Swedish woman to win Olympic giant slalom gold since Pernilla Wiberg at Albertville 1992, but her path to Olympic glory was far from easy.

In December 2014 the Swede won her first World Cup event in Austria and was looking forward to many more when injury struck and she spent an entire year off the slopes with reconstructive knee surgery, pain, and rehab.

During that time her mother was diagnosed with ALS - a nervous system disease.

“It’s tough to see someone you love fight that much to be able to do normal things like walk and talk and, sometimes, it makes me very sad,” she told Olympics.com in January.

Hector overcame all of that to win a historic gold medal, and she did it with a smile too.

"I really, really love skiing," she tells Olympics.com after the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, "I think it's so much fun being on the slopes, and this really makes me happy too... attitude is really important if you want to be able to succeed in sports or not."

When Hector beat double Olympic champion Mikaela Shiffrin in