In the Snowboard Cross finals at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Frieden was in second place well behind the American Lindsey Jacobellis, when the latter crashed while attempting to showboat on the second to last jump.

In her pocket was a Norwegian flag in memory of her friend, snowboarder Line Østvold, who died in a training accident in 2004 aged 25.

[1] Frieden, whose mother is from Norway, is fluent in Norwegian, as well as the Swiss German dialect of her native area.

She is a primary school teacher in Switzerland and lives half the year near her home town by the mountains of the Bernese Oberland.

After an Achilles heel injury which left her unable to defend her Olympic title, Frieden retired from snowboard cross three weeks before the Vancouver Games in 2010.