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After having the satisfaction of qualifying for the World Championships in St. Moritz 2017 and for the PyeongChang Games 2018 defending the colors of his native country, the Czech Republic, Jan Hudec hangs the skis to the nail at 36 after competing for up to a year and a half ago for his adopted country, Canada.
Saturday 31 March 2018 5 minutes reading time
Born on 19 August 1981 in Å umperk, a citizen of the then Czechoslovakia and now in the Czech Republic by a former alpine skier and a former cross-country ski runner, the young Jan first set two-year-old skis in Germany, a country where they had moved his parents, who then flew with his little son in Canada in 1986, first in Red Deer and then in Banff, again in Alberta. Hudec, after finishing fourth at Verbier downhill in his second Junior World Championships, debuted at the World Cup in the descent of St. Moritz on 2 February 2002, the year in which he won the ranking of descent and was fourth in the general classification of Nor-Am Cup, event in which he won three victories and another ten podiums.
His first podium in the Great Ski was the incredible silver medal in Ã…re on 11 February 2007, the last one was the bronze ex-aequo with Bode Miller in the superG of the Sochi Games 2014 of 16 February 2014, which was even more incredible of the former due to the industrial quantity of injuries suffered before and even after. In the middle there are also five podiums in the World Cup, namely the victories in the descents of Lake Louise on November 24, 2007 and Chamonix on February 4, 2012, two squares of honor in super-G and a third downhill. The 2011-2012 season was the one in which he managed to express himself with the greatest continuity, since he finished sixteenth in the general classification, ninth in the downhill and sixth in the superG.
The best results at the big events are the medals we remembered, from 2003 to 2017 he participated in six editions of the World Championships jumping the 2005 and 2015 injuries, same speech for the Turin Games 2006 but then being at the start in the next three editions. In the last two seasons he has participated in 13 cup competitions, the last super-K of Kitzbühel on 19 January, and his best result was a forty-first place, but having put the team out of Canada, the nice Jan took the opportunity succeeding in competing for his native country and thus qualifying for the last two big events of his career.
His last Grand Ski race was the Olympic super-G, which he did not complete, on 16 February last. Hudec ended his career with as many as 14 operations suffered, and the series is not closed because he has a shabby shoulder and has competed in Jeongseon with a broken knee crusader. Now he will dedicate himself to the growth of the new ski instructors of the Czech Republic. Thanks, Jan, for never giving in to bad luck all these years and for doing it only now, when it was inevitable to spend the rest of your life well!
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