Marina Gilardoni (born 4 March 1987) is a Swiss

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 ...

and former

bobsleigh Bobsleigh or bobsled is a team winter sport that involves making timed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sleigh. International bobsleigh competitions are governed by the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Feder ...

brakewoman. After starting her sporting career in heptathlon at the club level, Gilardoni began racing bobsleigh in 2007 and earned a place on the Swiss national team. She won gold medals at the Junior World Championships in 2008 behind driver Fabienne Meyer and in 2010 with Sabina Hafner driving. After the 2009–10 season, she switched from bobsleigh to skeleton. In 2018, Gilardoni was selected to represent Switzerland in the

Winter Olympics The Winter Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'hiver) is a major international multi-sport event held once every four years for sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympic Games, the 1924 Winter Olympics, were h ...

in Pyeongchang after the

Dutch Olympic Committee The Dutch Olympic Committee*Dutch Sports Federation, ( nl, Nederlands Olympisch Comité*Nederlandse Sport Federatie) generally abbreviated NOC*NSF, is the overall coordinating Dutch sports organization that also functions as the Dutch National Ol ...

refused one of their two entries and it was reallocated to Switzerland.

Notable results

Gilardoni's only podium finishes in bobsleigh were the two Junior World Championship wins. After switching to skeleton, she spent the 2010–11 season on the Europe Cup circuit but was quickly promoted to the Swiss World Cup squad for 2011–12, with the goal of maintaining the Swiss athlete quota in the World Cup. At her first World Cup race (

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 ...

2011), Gilardoni finished 14th. She competed in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, finishing 18th. Gilardoni's most successful season was 2015–16, when she earned four podiums (silver at Lake Placid and bronzes at

Königssee The Königssee is a natural lake in the extreme southeast Berchtesgadener Land district of the German state of Bavaria, near the Austrian border. Most of the lake is within the Berchtesgaden National Park. Description Situated within the Berch ...

and St. Moritz) on the way to an overall season ranking of fifth. Since then, her performance has been hampered by a nagging back injury, Gilardoni won the Swiss national championship at St. Moritz in December 2017, by six seconds over Alena Huber.

References

External links

* * 1987 births Skeleton racers at the 2014 Winter Olympics Skeleton racers at the 2018 Winter Olympics Living people Olympic skeleton racers for Switzerland Swiss female skeleton racers 20th-century Swiss women 21st-century Swiss women {{Skeleton-bio-stub