 Traa in Bjerkreim 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | 28 January 1974 (age 50) [1] Voss, Norway [1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) [1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 65 kg (143 lb) [1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Kari Traa (born 28 January 1974) is a Norwegian former Olympic freestyle skier. She won the Olympic title in the moguls event at the 2002 Winter Olympics, finished second at the 2006 games, and finished third at the 1998 games.
She is four times World Champion, from 2001 (moguls + parallel moguls) and 2003 (moguls + parallel moguls), and has also three silver medals (both moguls and parallel moguls in 1999, and moguls in 2005). [2] She has a total of 37 World Cup victories.
Kari Traa missed the cut for the final round and finished 14th in the 1992 Winter Olympics at Albertville - the first official Olympic mogul competition. Kari did not compete when the Games came to her home country Norway and Lillehammer in 1994. She injured her knee after wiping out on a training run just three weeks before the Olympics. [1] After the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan - Kari finally had an Olympic medal when she won bronze. In subsequent Winter Olympics she gained a gold medal (2002) and silver (2006). [3]
Traa attracted attention when she posed almost nude in a series of pictures in the sports magazine Ultrasport in 2001. [4] She started a company in 2002, selling sports clothes, and has later won awards for successfully launching her collections. [5] Her autobiography Kari was issued in 2006. [6] After finishing her active career she has been engaged in recruitment of young ski talents and participated as arranger of world cup events. She is also engaged in the festival Ekstremsportveko (Extreme Sports Week) held at her home community Voss, regarded as one of the world's largest extreme sports festivals.
Kari Traa was elected "Sexiest woman in Norway" in 2002 by the magazine MANN. [7] Her og Nå and TV 2 Nettavisen elected her as "Most sexy woman" in both 2003 and 2004. [8] In 2007, she was second on a similar list compiled by the TV-program God kveld, Norge! . [9]
She was also mentioned as a sponsor for the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis in a segment on their TV show I kveld med YLVIS where they tried to become "big" in Swahiliwood. Ylvis asked Traa to co-fund a movie production that had run out of money. She agreed and co-funded it with Svendsen Eksos, a local car-repair shop in Norway. In return, Traa's merchandise company was mentioned in the movie's dialogue.
In 2006 she received the Nynorsk User of the Year award.
Maritza Correia, also known by her married name Maritza McClendon, is a former Olympic swimmer from Puerto Rico who swam representing the United States. When she qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in 2004, she became the first Puerto Rican of African descent to be a member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team. She was the first female African-American swimmer for the United States to win an Olympic medal. She also became the first black American swimmer to set an American and world swimming record.
Jennifer Heil is a Canadian freestyle skier from Spruce Grove, Alberta. Heil started skiing at age two. Jennifer Heil won the first gold medal for Canada in the 2006 Winter Olympics games in Turin, Italy and a silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which was also Canada's first medal in those games. Jennifer held the Guinness World Record for most gold medals won at a World Championship. She has four world championship titles in total and two silver medals from the Worlds as well. Over her career, Heil became the first mogul skier to complete the "Grand Slam" winning all major titles in the sport including a record-tying five overall FIS World Cup Crystal Globe titles. Jennifer is a member of the Canadian Order of Sport, Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Pantheon des Sports du Québec, inducted as the winningest female skier in Canadian history.
The Women's Moguls event in freestyle skiing at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy took place on 11 February.
Hannah Angela Kearney is an American mogul skier who won a gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics and a bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Deidra Dionne is a Canadian freestyle skier. She was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. She won bronze in the 2002 Winter Olympics in freestyle aerial ski She also won the bronze medal at the 2001 and 2003 FIS World Freestyle Ski Championships.
Torger Nergård, also spelled Nergaard is a Norwegian curler from Oslo.
Yulia Anatolyevna Chepalova is a former Russian cross-country skier.
Tae Satoya is a Japanese freestyle skier. She won the Olympic title in the moguls event at the 1998 Winter Olympics, and she finished third at the 2002 games.
Canada has sent athletes to every Winter Olympic Games and every Summer Olympic Games since its debut at the 1900 games with the exception of the 1980 Summer Olympics, which it boycotted along with the USA and other countries. Canada has won at least one medal at every Olympics in which it has competed. The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) is the National Olympic Committee for Canada.
Ylvis are a Norwegian comedy duo consisting of brothers Vegard and Bård Ylvisåker. They debuted as professional variety artists in 2000 and have since appeared in several countries in variety shows, comedy concerts, television shows, radio shows and music videos. They hosted the Norwegian talk show I kveld med Ylvis (2011–2016). Their song and music video "The Fox ", written and filmed for the talk show, went viral on YouTube in September 2013. The video has over 1.1 billion views as of July 2024. They released an album called Ylvis: Volume I, a compilation of ten older singles. In 2018, the brothers released a series titled Stories from Norway, in which they collected headlining stories from Norway and presented them as short musical documentaries to address satire, fun and comedy.
Shannon Bahrke is an American Olympic freestyle skier and entrepreneur. Bahrke was the silver medalist in Moguls at the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City and went on to become the 2003 World Cup Champion. She also won the bronze medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. With her bronze medal in 2010, she became the first US women's freestyle skier to win multiple Olympic medals. Bahrke was also the 2009 US National Champion in dual moguls. She has reached the podium twice at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, winning bronze in 2003 and silver in 2007, both in dual moguls.
Yelizaveta Aleksandrovna Kozhevnikova is a Russian freestyle skier and Olympic medalist.
Ingrid Berntsen is a Norwegian freestyle skier who specialized in the moguls. Her career peaked with good performances in the 2002–03 World Cup, but she never succeeded in the Olympic Games, and spent most of her career in the shadow of Kari Traa.
Alexandre Bilodeau is a Canadian retired freestyle skier from Rosemere, Quebec, Bilodeau currently resides in Montreal, Quebec. Bilodeau won a gold medal in the men's moguls at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, becoming the first Canadian to win a gold medal at an Olympic Games held in Canada. At the 2014 Winter Olympics, he became the first Olympian in history to defend his gold medal in any freestyle skiing event as well as the first Canadian to defend an individual title since Catriona Le May Doan at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bilodeau is a three-time FIS World Champion in dual moguls, and is also a two-time Worlds silver medallist in moguls. He was the FIS World Cup champion for the 2008–09 season winning the moguls and overall freestyle skiing title that season. In his final World Cup race, he retired with a win, and in doing so, surpassed Jean-Luc Brassard for the most World Cup medals by a Canadian.
The FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup is an annual freestyle skiing competition arranged by the International Ski Federation since 1980. Currently six disciplines are included in world cup: moguls, aerials, ski cross, halfpipe, slopestyle and big air. In the 1980s and 1990s there were also ski ballet and combined, which no longer exist.
Norway competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, from 7 to 23 February 2014.
Ultrasport was a Norwegian extreme sports magazine. The magazine was started in 1991. In 2001 the magazine published nude photos of Kari Traa, which caused public outcry in Norway. In 2006 the magazine was acquired by Cicero Norway AS. It ceased publication in 2008.
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