Ester Ledecká was born in Prague, to mother Zuzana, a figure skater,[2] and father Janek Ledecký, a well-known musician in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

[3][4] She comes from a sporting family: her maternal grandfather is a former ice hockey player Jan Klapáč, who was a seven-time World Championship and two-time Olympic medallist.

[11] Ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, The Daily Telegraph's Andrew Lawton mentioned Ledecká as the "one to watch" in the women's snowboarding competition.

[10] She was among the Czech athletes most expected to win a medal at the games, along with Martina Sáblíková, Gabriela Soukalová and fellow snowboarder Eva Samková.

She was visibly shocked after finishing 0.01 seconds ahead of the 2014 Olympics defending gold medalist Anna Veith, who had already been proclaimed the winner by many media outlets.

[18] To make the feat even more surprising to reporters, she was rumored to be allegedly racing on skis borrowed from Mikaela Shiffrin (both racers are sponsored by Atomic).

[19] Her snowboard coach, American Justin Reiter, arrived at the start of the Ladies PGS event with his reversible Czech team jacket confidently already turned gold side out.

In the 2022 Winter Olympics, Ledecká repeated as the snowboarding gold medalist in parallel giant slalom, while in Alpine skiing she finished fifth in super-G and fourth in combined.

[25] Ultimately, she was unable to return for the Alpine skiing world championships in February[26] but made it back for the final snowboarding races in March at Berchtesgaden, where she won the women's parallel slalom for her only win of the season.