Tanja Frieden

Tanja Frieden is a Swiss snowboarder, born on 6 February 1976 in Bern, who won the gold medal in the first snowboard cross competition held at the Winter Olympics, at the 2006 Games. In the final she was well behind the American Lindsey Jacobellis, who crashed while showboating on the second to last jump, and Frieden passed her to take the title. She carried a Norwegian flag in memory of her friend Line Østvold, a snowboarder who died in a training accident in 2004. Her mother is from Norway and she is fluent in Norwegian as well as Swiss German. An Achilles injury kept her from defending the title and she retired three weeks before the 2010 Vancouver Games.