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Thomas Sykora
Personal information
Born	18 May 1968 (age 56); Tulln, Austria
Occupation	Alpine skier
Skiing career
Disciplines	Slalom
World Cup debut	30 November 1991
Olympics
Teams	1
Medals	1
World Championships
Teams	3
World Cup
Wins	9
Podiums	21
Discipline titles	2
Medal record
Men's alpine skiing
Representing Austria
Olympic Games

Thomas Sykora (born 18 May 1968) is a former alpine skier from Austria.

Biography

Thomas comes from a sporting family: his father Ernst Sykora was a ski instructor, and his aunts Liese Prokop and Maria Sykora were both successful athletes. He competed at the 1994 Winter Olympics and the 1998 Winter Olympics, winning a bronze medal at the latter.^[1]

Sykora won the 1996/97 and 1997/98 Slalom World Cups. Before winning these 2 World Cups, he finished second of the competition in 1994 in Lech. After finishing first in the first round, he eventually was beaten by Alberto Tomba by 2 hundredths of a second after the second round. In total, Thomas won nine World Cup races. At the Olympic Games 1998 in Nagano, he won the bronze medal in slalom. In 1996 and 1999 he also became Austrian slalom champion.

After numerous knee injuries, Thomas Sykora was forced to quit his career and became an ORF commentator. He started commenting on women's races in 2000. Later, he served as commentator in important men's slaloms (Kitzbühel, Schladming). On most of the races he comments, Thomas wears a helmet with a camera to show the spectators the different routes of the slalom, and their difficulties.

After the end of his active career as an athlete, he decided to study mental coaching in Bregenz; he then graduated with an MBA.

World Cup victories

Overall results

Season	Discipline
1997	Slalom^[2]
1998	Slalom^[3]

Individual victories

Date	Location	Race
14 January 1996	Kitzbühel	Slalom
10 March 1996	Hafjell	Slalom
24 November 1996	Park City	Slalom
17 December 1996	Madonna di Campiglio	Slalom
6 January 1997	Kranjska Gora	Slalom
12 January 1997	Chamonix	Slalom
19 January 1997	Wengen	Slalom
4 January 1998	Kranjska Gora	Slalom
26 January 1998	Kitzbühel	Slalom

References

^ Evans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; et al. "Thomas Sykora". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
^ "1997 World Cup Ski Standings (Slalom)". FIS-SKI.com. Federation Internationale de Ski. Archived from the original on 23 October 2012.
^ "1998 World Cup Ski Standings (Slalom)". FIS-SKI.com. Federation Internationale de Ski. Archived from the original on 23 October 2012.