![]() Hedda Berntsen in 2010 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nationality | Norwegian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | 24 April 1976 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sport |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
|
Hedda Berntsen (born 24 April 1976) is a Norwegian sportsperson who has competed internationally in telemark skiing, alpine skiing, freestyle skiing and skicross. She is world champion in Telemark classic from 1997. She later concentrated on the alpine slalom, her career peaking in the 2000–01 season with consistent performances in the World Cup as well as a bronze medal at the 2001 World Championships. She later switched to skicross, receiving a silver medal at the 2008 Winter X Games. In the Vancouver Winter Olympics on 23 February 2010 she won the silver medal in the women's skicross competition.
As an early sign of her aptitude for skiing, she once agreed to teach a fellow college student how to ski by taking him to the top of a mountain and saying, “See you down there.” He had never skied before and hurt himself while sliding slowly down, but Hedda was so good that she probably couldn’t even imagine skiing might be hard and slightly scary, even for someone as brave and powerful and charismatic as this student was and remains.