5 minute read
SNOW QUEEN
Winter Olympic skier Alice Robinson
Among New Zealand’s medal prospects at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics is 20-year-old Queenstown ski racer Alice Robinson.
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By Gavin Bertram.
Standing at the brink, engulfed by the mountain and the weight of expectation, it’s easy to surrender to doubt.
Contemplating a vertical drop of around 400m, with more than 50 gates to negotiate, at average speeds of 80kmh… the giant slalom event is a challenge for both body and mind.
For New Zealand Winter Olympian Alice Robinson, it’s still a daunting prospect even after winning the World Junior Championship in 2019, and three wins on the World Cup circuit.
“You have to be super confident to succeed in this sport, when you’ve got a minute to give it everything you have down these mountains,” she says. “At the start gate, I think about tactical and technical cues, and just hype myself up and assert my confidence in myself.”
Celebrating winning the World Cup event in Austria, October 2019.
Photo: Alexander Hessenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images
ROBINSON’S first experience on the snow came when she was just three, on a New Zealand holiday when her family still lived in Sydney.
The following year they moved to Queenstown, and from then on the mountains loomed large. She virtually grew up on Coronet Peak, being enrolled in the ski school holiday programme there from the age of four or five.
“I definitely would have had quite a different life if we didn’t move here,” Robinson reflects. “I always loved being out there. And I started racing at eight with the local ski team. We had a great group of kids, and we were all just having the best time and racing.”
Competitive in various sports as a child, she had a sense early on that representing New Zealand was a dream worth pursuing. The Olympics was the grail at the summit of those aspirations.
When ski racing became the sport Robinson loved the most, the dream came into sharper focus. And after winning Under-14 and Under-16 events overseas, she really started to believe.
Despite her obvious natural talent, the athlete says that it’s largely been luck that has progressed her to the point of being the joint number one women’s giant slalom skier this year.
“It isn’t really a big enough sport in New Zealand, so there really isn’t a pathway for it,” Robinson explains. “We kind of lucked out and did the right things and had some good advice. It’s definitely a very tough sport to break into when you’re competing with European countries where ski racing is kind of treated like rugby is here, and there are very clear pathways for the kids there.”
HAVING won the New Zealand National Alpine Championships for both slalom and giant slalom in 2017, the following January Robinson made her World Cup debut in Slovenia.
Gaining the attention of Olympic selectors, she was selected for the team to compete at Pyeongchang 2018 - New Zealand’s youngest ever Winter Olympian at 16.
“It was pretty full on,” Robinson admits. “I found out I was going 10 days before I flew over there. I wasn’t really a big medal prospect at the time, so it was really lucky I got the opportunity. They saw some potential for the next Olympics and they wanted me to get that experience. I’d only been racing in the open age groups for about three months.”
Robinson winning her first World Cup event in Austria.
Photo: Alexis Boichard/Agence Zoom/Getty images
Following that experience, Robinson’s career really began to gather momentum. She won the giant slalom event at the Junior World Championships in Italy in February 2019, and soon after gained her first podium in the World Cup, coming second in Andorra.
That achievement was eclipsed in October 2019, when Robinson won her first World Cup event in Austria.
“My first podium on the World Cup was the first time I felt like I really belonged there,” she says. “And then when I won my first World Cup it was just an epic feeling. I definitely didn’t process that for a while because it was pretty unexpected.”
Since then, Robinson has won two more World Cup events in Slovenia and Switzerland, and come second in Slovakia.
WITH success comes a greater expectation of further success, and more pressure on an athlete.
And so Robinson has learnt to enjoy her wins, and then start thinking about the next race and working harder to make sure it can happen again.
Coach Jeff Fergus, from the International Ski Racing Academy, has said that Robinson is “probably the most adaptive athlete” he’d ever worked with.
“You can tell her to do something and she can correct it so quickly,” he said. “I’ve never seen an athlete make adjustments as quickly as Alice.”
Having finished a training programme in New Zealand that was interrupted by lockdown, Robinson had a week off before heading to Europe for the World Cup season.
Racing on that circuit will take her right through to the Winter Olympics in February. She believes the experience gained over the last four years may be enough to see her on the podium in Beijing.
“I’ve been racing at the World Cup and World Championship level now for three years, and I’ve learnt a lot,” Robinson says. “I’ve developed as an athlete and also changed as a person. I'm obviously wanting to get a medal obviously in the giant slalom, and maybe even a medal in another event.”
NEW Zealand’s team for Beijing features other medal hopes, including 2018 bronze medallists snowboarder Zoi Sadowski- Synnott and freeskier Nico Porteous.
Robinson believes the current crop of New Zealand snow sports athletes is a consequence of the amazing conditions on offer in the South Island, and the environment around snow culture.
And within the young team there is a great spirit, helped by the fact the athletes all compete in different events.
“We’re all supportive of each other, and we’re all similar ages which is quite fun,” Robinson says. “We all went to Pyeongchang together and so it’s quite cool to see how all of us have developed over the last four years. We have a good opportunity for multiple medals in Beijing, and that’s what we’re all aiming for.”
Covid-19 has made international sport a difficult prospect, with Robinson reflecting that the only certain thing at the moment is uncertainty.
With skiing consuming most of her life, she enjoys those moments when she’s at home in New Zealand and can relax.
“It just feels really easy on the body and the mind being here,” she says. “I just love being around all my friends and family at home because I don’t get it that much. My life is not very interesting outside skiing - I’m just trying to enjoy moments.”
New Zealand Winter Olympians for Beijing 2022. (L-R) Zoi Sadowski - Synnott, Margaux Hackett, Alice Robinson, Finn Bilous, Nico Porteous.
Photo: Joe/Getty Images for NZOC
