Elfriede Eder was born in Zell am See and grew up in Leogang . Her older sisters Sylvia , who also competed in the World Cup for many years, and Birgit, who won two medals at junior world championships but had to end their careers early after a cruciate ligament tear , were also ski racers. In 1985 Eder won the giant slalom of the Trofeo Topolino . In the same year, the then 15-year-old was accepted into the junior squad of the Austrian Ski Association . At the Junior World Championships in Madonna di Campiglio in 1988 she won the bronze medal in the giant slalom, but at that time she was particularly successful in the slalom. She took second place in the European Cup slalom classification in the 1987/88 season and won it in the 1989/90 season . So she found acceptance into the ÖSV World Cup team for the following winter . After finishing 14th twice in her first World Cup season , she achieved four top 10 results in her second season in 1991/92 . After further top 10 results in the 1992/93 season , she finally celebrated her first major success at the 1993 World Championships in Morioka - Shizukuishi by winning the bronze medal in slalom.
World Cup Eder remained in the 1993/94 season continues without podium (best result and only top-10 finish of the winter was the fourth place in the slalom in Maribor), but the next major event, the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer , she stood as second in the slalom behind Vreni Schneider again on the podium. In the World Cup, however, she was never able to achieve such results for the time being, and so after a rather unsuccessful 1994/95 season she even temporarily relegated from the national team to the A-squad. A coach change in the ÖSV - Gottfried Trinkl became the new technical trainer for women - brought the hoped-for World Cup successes and Eder won the two slaloms in Vail and St. Anton at the beginning of the 1995/96 season and a third slalom in Semmering before the turn of the year . With further podium places she secured the win of the Slalom World Cup early on. With her World Cup victories, Eder was one of the favorites for the slalom of the 1996 World Cup in the Sierra Nevada . After the first run she was still on the medal course in third place, but in the second run she fell back to seventh place.
Eder could not quite repeat the World Cup successes of the previous year in the 1996/97 season . She was only once on the podium in second place in the Zwiesel slalom , but achieved sixth place in the Slalom World Cup with another four top 5 placements. At the 1997 World Championships in Sestriere , she finished fifth. When their "successful coach" Gottfried Trinkl was dismissed from the ÖSV in the summer of 1997, Eder also turned his back on the ÖSV. She wanted to continue working with Trinkl as a private coach, but the ÖSV did not allow her, which is why she sought a change of nationality, which was not made possible for her by the ÖSV. On June 30, 1997, she did not renew her license for the Austrian association. Only after a one-year ban she was able to start for the Caribbean island state Grenada , which previously had to found a ski association and be recognized by the FIS , which was sanctioned on May 24, 1998 at its congress in Prague .
After the association change, Eder no longer achieved their previous level of performance in the 1998/99 season . Her best results were two eleventh places in the slaloms of Veysonnaz and Semmering. At the 1999 World Championships in Vail / Beaver Creek , she was eliminated in the first slalom run, in the giant slalom she was only 32. After an injury, she announced her retirement in autumn 1999. Today she and her husband run a hotel in their home town of Leogang.
Austria (until 1997) Grenada (from 1998)
