The absence of speed ski training has been the only blight for New Zealand skier Alice Robinson as she wraps up preparations in Queenstown ahead of the biggest season of her career.
The 19-year-old heads to Europe on Thursday ahead of the Alpine skiing World Cup season that will take her to as many as 16 different venues spread across Europe, North America, and China, for February's Beijing Winter Olympics.
Robinson has set herself lofty goals: Winning the GS globe (for the best Giant Slalom skier during the World Cup season) and making the podium in her strongest discipline at the Beijing Olympics. Achieve that and Robinson would become only the second New Zealander after Annelise Coberger's 1992 slalom silver medal in Albertville to win an Olympic Alpine skiing medal.
Robinson's Kiwi co-coach Chris Knight rates the training camp at Coronet Peak, that was disrupted by two-and-a-half weeks off the snow during the country's Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown, as a 7.5 out of 10. Robinson agrees but heads to Europe with a clear head and high expectations, believing she is in the best physical shape of her career.
Last season was a learning one in many ways for the young Kiwi. Expectations were raised but for a multitude of reasons she struggled in the first half of the season to repeat her heroics the season prior, where she won in Austria and Slovenia.
She had left for Europe in early August 2020 when the American contingent (Jeff Fergus and Pepe Culver) in her coaching team were denied exemptions to travel downunder. Her parents were unable to travel due to the pandemic and Robinson faced nine months living out of a suitcase which proved challenging in a season complicated by Covid-19.
"Last year was just pretty full-on with everything. I went over to Europe kind of a bit blind, and it was a massive year for learning and new experiences and a lot of challenges with Covid. I was on the back foot with preseason training and left early for Europe to try and ramp things up," Robinson said.
"I wasn't in very good physical shape at the start of last season and came in on the back foot having missed a lot of my preseason in the gym. Without my coaches being here I didn't do as much training on snow. Also, it's a mental thing - when you are not in the right space it's really hard to get out of those ruts.
"Not having confidence is just so crucial in sport. To be in the start gate and staring down the hill at these really technical and challenging race hills, you have to be fully confident in yourself and really believe you can do it and I was just missing that at the start of last year and I slowly had to rebuild my confidence."
By early January things were starting to turn for Robinson. Her results were improving gradually with a couple of top 15 performances and she was able to head to Cortina in Italy for February's World Championships with confidence. She finished fourth, and backed that up with a second at the World Cup race in Slovenia. Saving her best for last, Robinson blitzed her rivals to win gold at the World Cup finals in Switzerland in mid-March. The racer described by commentators as the "most explosive skier on the circuit" was back.
Robinson believes the signs are positive that she can hit the ground running in Solden in Austria this month and start as she ended last season. She had her co-coaches Knight and Fergus, along with her ski technician Culver, in the country since late July and has had a productive couple of months training.
Already one of the best Giant Slalom skiers with three World Cup victories, Robinson plans a full assault on the Super G calendar after only contesting half the races last season. She also plans to start her Downhill career, the blue riband speed event. It's a catch-22 as she needs to find some lesser Downhill races to get some points on the board in order to race Downhill on the World Cup circuit.
It won't be easy on a congested calendar. Competing in Downhill will enhance her prospects for the Super G with races typically held on the same hill after several days of Downhill racing.
"It's impossible to succeed in Super G without being a part of the Downhill circuit as well, just because especially for me, being a new athlete on the circuit I don't know any of these race hills and some girls have been racing these for 10 years at Europa Cup and World Cup level.
"I'm going into these Super G courses completely blind, having not skied down the hill once, and when you're dealing with 130 kilometres per hour and huge forces it's very difficult to know where the gates are.
"Because of safety, in downhill, you need to do some training runs to be able to learn the hill, and then they run the Super G on the back of that. So, the girls who have three or four days on the hill before the Super G races has a huge advantage."
The next two weeks in Europe will see Robinson focus on Giant Slalom training ahead of the opening race at Solden on October 23. Then it will be off to the US and Copper Mountain in Colorado for a speed training block.
She will compete in the GS at Killington in late November before potentially heading to Lake Louise in Canada for some Downhill training ahead of her first World Cup Super G race there in early December.
The season promises so much for Robinson, who turns 20 on December 1, with most of her rivals in their mid-20s. Robinson acknowledges the pressure and expectation will increase from back home as the Olympics draw closer, but she feels in a good space to deal with it.
"There's definitely more expectation going into Beijing than there was going to Pyeongchang. I was a 16-year-old kid just given the opportunity which I was grateful for, but I wasn't a medal prospect at all. They wanted to give me the experience. I was super lucky because the Olympics is very different to the other competitions that we take part in.
"I try and use the pressure as motivation to fuel me, people expect stuff so I just want to go there and try and live up to people's expectations, but I know my biggest critic is going to be myself. I just have to have self-belief and try and enjoy the moment and have fun with it."
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