Elisabeth Maier (née Vathje) (born March 17, 1994, in Calgary,

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

) is a retired Canadian

skeleton racer Skeleton is a winter sliding sport in which a person rides a small sled, known as a skeleton bobsled (or -sleigh), down a frozen track while lying face down and head-first. The sport and the sled may have been named from the bony appearance of ...

. In 2008, she was encouraged to try sliding sports by her father, who had shared an airplane trip with members of the Canadian luge team, but as a 14-year-old, she was too young to train bobsleigh, so she tried out for skeleton instead. She used a Bromley sled. Vathje was named one of the three women to represent Canada in

skeleton at the 2018 Winter Olympics Skeleton at the 2018 Winter Olympics was held at the Alpensia Sliding Centre near Pyeongchang, South Korea. The events were scheduled to take place between 15 and 17 February 2018. A total of two skeleton events were held, one each for men and ...

in Pyeongchang after finishing third in the World Cup season standings for 2017–18. She is married to Austrian bobsleigh driver Benjamin Maier. She retired in 2022 after being left off the Canadian team for the 2021–22 season.

Notable results

Vathje's first international race was on the

North American Cup North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

in 2010, at Lake Placid, where she finished 8th. The following season, she finished 16th in her first Junior World Championships and continued to race on the North American circuit, taking her first international gold at Lake Placid in 2013. Vathje was promoted to the Intercontinental Cup during the 2013–14 season, and won a silver medal at her fourth Junior Worlds in Winterberg, Germany, earning her a promotion to the World Cup squad. In the 2014–15 World Cup season, her first on the top level of international sliding, Vathje had five podium finishes including one gold medal, at Calgary, and three silvers, in Lake Placid, St. Moritz and

Igls Innsbruck (; bar, Innschbruck, label=Austro-Bavarian ) is the capital of Tyrol and the fifth-largest city in Austria. On the River Inn, at its junction with the Wipp Valley, which provides access to the Brenner Pass to the south, it had a po ...

. She subsequently took home gold at races in Whistler (

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses duri ...

) and Winterberg (

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...

), as well as several additional podium finishes. Vathje finished the 2017–18 season with 1470 points, ranking third, her best season in the overall World Cup rankings.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Maier, Elisabeth 1994 births Canadian female skeleton racers Living people Sportspeople from Calgary Skeleton racers at the 2018 Winter Olympics Olympic skeleton racers for Canada 20th-century Canadian women 21st-century Canadian women