With an international career stretching back nearly two decades, Austria’s Lukas Klapfer is firmly established as one of the statesmen of Nordic combined skiing. A World Championship medallist at both junior and senior level, his greatest achievement to date is his trio of Olympic bronze medals, won at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics. Since first competing in the World Cup during 2004/05, he has only missed one tournament, racking up 12 podium finishes and two top-ten overall finishes.

Klapfer was born on Christmas Day 1985 in Eisenerz, a former mining town in Austria. His first taste of major international competition came in February 2003 when, aged just 16, he competed in three events at the Junior World Championships in Sweden. At the following year’s event in Norway, he won his first medal, a bronze, in the team relay. A determined, relentless competitor, Klapfer nevertheless has to wait until 2014 for his next medal. It was worth waiting for. At the Winter Olympics in Russia, he was part of the Austrian team that took bronze. His confidence buoyed by success at the world’s biggest sporting event, Klapfer went on to win his first World Cup stage during the following season.

The years since have seen Klapfer consolidate his achievements, winning stages of the Continental Cup, World Cup podium places, and of course, two more Olympic medals at the 2018 Games in South Korea. Here, he and the Austrian team repeated their bronze-winning performance of 2014, but Klapfer also took bronze in the individual 10km race, the greatest achievement yet in a long and satisfying career.