Tanja Frieden is a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 snowboarder. She won a gold medal

Gold medal

A gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...

 in the inaugural Snowboard Cross competition at the 2006 Winter Olympics

2006 Winter Olympics

The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Turin, Italy from February 10, 2006, through February 26, 2006. This marked the second time Italy hosted the Olympic Winter Games, the first being the VII Olympic Winter...

.

In the Snowboard Cross finals at the 2006 Winter Olympics

Snowboarding at the 2006 Winter Olympics

The 2006 Winter Olympic Games Snowboarding competition consisted of men's and women's Halfpipe, Parallel Giant Slalom and Snowboard Cross events.-Medal table:-Men's events:-Women's events:...

, Frieden was in second place well behind American Lindsey Jacobellis

Lindsey Jacobellis

Lindsey Jacobellis is an American snowboarder from Stratton, Vermont.At the 2006 Winter Olympics, Jacobellis won the silver medal in Women's Snowboard Cross's Olympics debut...

 when the latter crashed while attempting to showboat on the second to last jump. Frieden passed Jacobellis and won the gold medal. In her pocket was a Norwegian flag in memory of her friend, snowboarder Line Lunde Østvold, who died in a training accident in 2004 aged 25.

Frieden, whose mother is from Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, is fluent in Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, as well as the Swiss German

Swiss German

Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...

 dialect of her native area. She also can speak German, French and English.

She is a primary school teacher in Switzerland and lives half the year near her home town by the mountains of the Bernese Oberland. The other half she is on world tour in the ski/snowboard races.

After an Achilles heel injury which left her unable to defend her Olympic title, Frieden retired from snowboard cross three weeks before the Vancouver Games in 2010.

External links

• http://www.TanjaFrieden.ch