Queenstown ski racer Alice Robinson has triumphed in top spot in the Australia New Zealand Cup’s giant slalom, after a ‘‘world-class’’
performance on Coronet Peak during Winter Games NZ on Tuesday.
Taking home the yellow bib, Robinson was in fourth place after her first run, but a stellar second run saw her close the time deficit and take out first place by almost half a second.
Robinson’s former coach Nils Coberger says it was ‘‘breathtaking’’ to watch her come back into form on a ‘‘very technical hill’’.
‘‘[She was] so aggressive with her tactics, so aggressive with her skiing.
‘‘There’s a lot of risk but huge rewards if you ski like that and very few skiers in the world can pull off what she does on skis.’’
While she was ‘‘a little off the pace’’ at the start of the week in the Super G — tactical errors leading to two ‘did not finish’ results — Coberger says it was great to see ‘‘the old Alice that we love’’ surface in her later runs.
‘‘There’s an old saying, ‘class is permanent and form comes and goes’ … and Alice is just world-class.
‘‘She has runs that people dream of, and she produces them run after run.’’
Ava Sunshine (United States) finished in second place, 49 seconds behind Robinson, while Katie Hensien, also of the US, came in third, a
mere two hundredths of a second behind her teammate.
WGNZ action’s now at to Cardrona Alpine Resort. with FIS ANC slopestyle qualifers today, ahead of finals for that, freeski and snowbard halfpipe tomorrow, while The North Face Frontier’s weather window at The Remarkables starts on Saturday and goes till
Monday.
