In case you’ve been living under a rock, or too busy skiing a mega snowstorm of you own, then you’ll know that New Zealand’s Alice Robinson from Queenstown made history by winning Giant Slalom silver at the FIS World Championships in Saalbach, Austria this week.
The Australian born 23 year old entered the World Championships as one of the favourites, off the back of a victory at the last Giant Slalom World Cup race in Kronplatz and as the current leader of the Giant Slalom World Cup standings for the 2025 season.
In bib 5, Robinson made the most of the more favourable snow conditions earlier in the day and put down a blistering first run. She was quick out the start gate and read the terrain well, quickly settling into her rhythm as she made her way down the physically demanding course.
Federica Brignone of Italy set the fastest first run time, with Robinson just +0.67 behind her and the only athlete to come within a second of the Italian’s superb first run time.
The second-to-last athlete out of the start gate for run two, Robinson flew down the course skiing dynamically and gaining speed and advantage at every interval, taking the race lead by -1.72 with just Brignone left to ski.
“In the second run I just tried to go for it and not think too much, and honestly, it didn’t feel good – It was rough and I think I was pushing it so much that I felt a bit out of control so I didn’t know if it was fast or not…When I saw the green light I thought maybe it was good enough for gold but Federica was amazing today,” said Robinson.
Brignone took the gold medal by -0.90, marking the first time an Italian woman has won the Giant Slalom World Championships in 28 years. Robinson finished in second, claiming both her own and New Zealand’s first-ever Alpine Ski World Championships medal with the USA’s Paula Moltzan rounding out the podium in third, claiming her first-ever individual Alpine World Championships medal.
Robinson’s previous best FIS Alpine World Championships result was a fourth place finish at the 2021 World Championships in Italy. New Zealand’s previous best results were fourth place finishes from both Robinson in 2021 and Claudia Riegler in slalom at the 1996 World Championships held in Spain.
