Benjamin Karl

Austrian snowboarder Benjamin Karl is a four-time World Championships gold medallist, a multiple World Cup victor, and a Winter Olympic medal-winner. Karl competes in the parallel giant slalom and parallel slalom events, and has enjoyed success in team events as well as individual races. In a career spanning two decades, he has become one of the best-known and most celebrated alpine snowboarders internationally.

Having recorded podiums at junior and FIS events across Europe, Karl went on to make his mark at the Europa Cup, where he claimed his first victory in 2004. Later competing at the World Cup, he began to garner serious attention in 2008, when he took five podiums and two victories to claim the overall No. 1 in the circuit’s end-of-season standings. To date, he has recorded over 40 podiums at the World Cup, and has topped the overall parallel standings on multiple occasions. In recent years, Karl has had particular success in the parallel slalom team event, claiming World Cup victories in Winterberg, Moscow and Bad Gastein

Karl’s debut Winter Olympics was Vancouver in 2010, where he reached the final round of the tournament to take silver in the parallel giant slalom. Four years later in Sochi, he would again secure a medal, this time taking a bronze in the parallel slalom event. Meanwhile, at the World Championships, Karl has medalled in five consecutive competitions – including two silvers at Sierra Nevada, one gold each at Gangwon and Stoneham, and a pair of golds at La Molina in 2011.