Janka, Carlo

Carlo Janka, (born October 15, 1986, Obersaxen, Switzerland), Swiss Alpine skier whose clean, efficient style and poised determination helped establish him as one of the sport’s top all-around competitors in the early 21st century.

Janka was born in a mountain village in southeastern Switzerland and began skiing at age two. As a teenager he also played football (soccer), but Austrian skier Hermann Maier’s multiple-medal-winning performance at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, inspired him to focus exclusively on skiing. In December 2005, four years after his first Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS; International Ski Federation) race, Janka competed in his first World Cup event, and several months later he won a bronze medal in the giant slalom at the FIS junior world championships.

Though Janka registered two top-10 finishes in World Cup events in early 2008, his real breakthrough came in November of that year, when he placed second in the downhill race at Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, despite having been one of the last skiers on the course. The following month he won his first World Cup race with a victory in the giant slalom at Val-d’Isere, France. At the 2009 world championships in February, Janka scored two medals—a gold in the giant slalom and a bronze in the downhill—and later that month he clinched the World Cup title in the super combined.

Despite having suffered from a virus in the summer that severely limited his off-season training, Janka returned to the World Cup circuit in late 2009 at the peak of his skills. In December, at Beaver Creek, Colorado, U.S., he scored victories in the super combined, downhill, and giant slalom, becoming the first man to win races in three different disciplines on consecutive days since legendary French skier Jean-Claude Killy did so in 1967. Janka’s continued domination positioned him as a strong favourite at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Though doubts mounted as he failed to finish higher than fourth in any of his first three races there, he finally met expectations with a gold medal in the giant slalom. He capped off the 2009–10 World Cup season, and further demonstrated his versatility, by securing the overall title. He won another World Cup race—a giant slalom—during the 2010–11 season, but the quality of his skiing grew worse in the lead-up to the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, where his best finish in four events was sixth place in the downhill. Four years later he appeared in just one event at the 2018 Winter Games in P’yŏngch’ang, South Korea, a 15th-place finish in the Alpine combined race. Over the next several seasons, Janka endured various injuries, and, shortly before the Beijing Olympics in 2022, he retired.

Many observers attributed Janka’s success on the slopes to his streamlined style, which eschewed flashy moves in favour of precisely controlled motion and balance. He was also admired for his cool demeanour, a quality that led his Swiss teammates to accord him the nickname “the Iceman.”