Just four months after winning Silver at the World Championships at Beaver Creek, Austrian ski racer Nicole Hosp is retiring.
In a statement released yesterday Hosp said, “I feel now is the right time for a change.”
The 2007 Overall World Cup Champion, Hosp has experienced all the up’s and down’s a career of ski racing can offer and now she believes is as good a time as any to move on from the sport. Recently she’s been quoted as saying “I won’t be racing forever” and the announcement to retire was not completely unexpected.
Throughout the course of her career, Hosp was near the front of the pack in all her preferred disciplines. According to Lindsey Vonn’s Facebook page, “When Niki won [the] Sölden GS World Cup race when she was 19 my dad said ‘see Lindsey,that’s how you’re supposed to ski.'” adding, “I always tried to keep up with her.” After winning the overall title in 2007, Hosp was the runner up to Lindsey Vonn in 2008, which would turn out to be Vonn’s first of four overall titles.