Alexandra Meissnitzer
Alexandra Meissnitzer (born 18 June 1973) is a retired World Cup alpine ski racer from Austria. Her specialities were the downhill, super-G, and giant slalom disciplines. From Abtenau, Salzburg, her father, Hans Meissnitzer, a mechanic by trade, taught her to ski at an early age. At the 1998 Winter Olympics at Nagano, Meissnitzer won the silver in the giant-slalom and the bronze in the super-G, and at the 2006 Winter Olympics at Turin she won the bronze in the super-G. In 1999, she won the overall World Cup, to which she added the super -G and giant slalom World Cups for the same season. She also won two world titles (super-G and giant slalom) at the 1999 World Championships. A serious training crash in November 1999, she missed the remainder of the season. At the 2003 World Championships, she won the silver medal in the downhill race (in a tie with Corinne Rey-Bellet) behind Melanie Turgeon. Meissnitzer was third in the super-G at the 2008 World Cup finals in Bormio, Italy, and became the oldest woman (age 34) to finish on the podium in an alpine World Cup race. Alexandra Meissnitzer