Solid start to 2024 for Robinson
Alice Robinson claimed an eighth-place finish at the Kranjska Gora FIS Giant Slalom World Cup in Slovenia, her first race of 2024.
The Queenstown 22-year-old has had huge success at this venue in the past - it is the slope where she claimed her second World Cup win of her career in 2020.
The athletes were greeted by a soggy, damp day in the heartland of Slovenian alpine skiing. The venue, the Podkoren slope, is one of the most revered slopes on the Giant Slalom World Cup circuit. It is exceptionally steep, touching 30 degrees for most of the last 100 vertical metres, really putting the athletes to the test.
Robinson attacked the course with her trademark athletic, strong skiing and had the green light for the first couple of splits of run one. A couple of small errors cost her some time towards the bottom of the course and on the steep final pitch. Despite this, she held on and finished run one in 13th position, +1.34 seconds behind run one leader Petra Vlhova of Slovakia.
After a course reset, run two go underway. Robinson flew out the start gate, really attacking the middle part of the course and showing even more commitment than she did in her first run. She skied incredibly well, collecting green light after green light as she made her way down the challenging course.
"My second run was pretty solid, there were some conditions that I’m not the best at, so I just tried to be clean, and I had a pretty solid run and a solid result," she says. "I am hoping to build on that as we continue into the new year.”
She did enough to claim the leader's seat with her second run performance and was sitting -0.29 seconds ahead of her nearest competitor, but there were 12 of the best racers in the world still to come.
Robinson finished in a very respectable eighth place, +1.77 seconds behind winner Valerie Grenier of Canada.
Grenier claimed her second World Cup win of her career on the very same slope she won her first World Cup race last year. Switzerland’s Lara Gut-Behrami finished in second place and Italy’s Federica Brignone rounded out the podium in third.
With the FIS Alpine World Cup programme back in full swing, there is plenty of action coming up for Alice Robinson over the next couple of weeks.
