ROBINSON CARVING A NICHE

In the Northern Hemisphere's winter, she competes on the Alpine skiing World Cup circuit in the Alps.

In the Southern Hemisphere's winter, she trains at home in New Zealand.

Alice Robinson hardly ever gets to put her flip-flops on and enjoy summer.

And that's just fine with her.

"It's just been my yearly routine for so long that I don't really know much better," Robinson said. "I definitely miss some summer but I'm definitely a lot more comfortable in the winter climate."

Is she ever.

Robinson is off to quite a start to the Olympic season, shaping up as Mikaela Shiffrin's biggest challenger in the overall World Cup standings.

Beating Goggia and Vonn

In four giant slaloms, Robinson has registered two victories and a third-place finish.

Then on Dec 14, she finished ahead of Sofia Goggia and Lindsey Vonn in the season's opening super-G for her first career win in a speed discipline.

The victory in St Moritz, Switzerland, made Robinson the first man or woman from New Zealand to win a super-G. That came after a giant slalom victory last month -the fifth win of her career — made her the most successful women's World Cup winner from a non-European or North American nation.

Nearly two months into the season, Robinson sits second in the overall standings, 74 points behind Shiffrin.

Expanding to the speed disciplines has been something that Robinson has been considering ever since she announced herself to the skiing world by winning the season-opening giant slalom on the Rettenbach glacier in Solden, Austria, six years ago as a 17-year-old.

"I never just wanted to be a one-trick pony," she said.

Dual medal contender

Robinson's results make her a multi-medal contender for the Feb 6-22 Milano-Cortina Olympics -where she could become the first Alpine skiing gold medalist from her country.

New Zealand's only Olympic medal in Alpine skiing was a silver in slalom won by Annelise Coberger at the 1992 Albertville Games.

Coberger's brother, Nils Coberger, is one of Robinson's coaches.

At last season's world championships, Robinson took silver behind Federica Brignone in giant slalom for New Zealand's first medal in the biggest skiing competition outside of the Olympics.

Constantly being on snow does have some drawbacks, though.

"There's certain things about summer that I miss, because in New Zealand we have Christmas and New Year over summer so that's kind of a bit more of a memory that I miss," Robinson told reporters earlier this season. "My one advantage being from New Zealand is that I get to train at home in the offseason when everyone else is traveling around."

And when she's in the Alps, Robinson takes advantage of the abundance of wellness facilities.

"I've become a bit of a spa fan," she said. "In New Zealand we just don't do that — hotels don't have spas."

Ski school deal

Robinson was born in Sydney to Australian parents and moved to New Zealand when she was four.

"If that didn't happen I don't think I would have ended up in ski racing growing up in Bondi," she said of the Australian beach town.

In her new home in Queenstown, Robinson and her two siblings were surrounded by mountains and it was "15 minutes door-to-door" to the Coronet Peak ski area.

"My parents just put us in ski school. My mom told me the other day that it was cheaper to put me in the ski creche than to get a babysitter," Robinson said on a recent International Ski and Snowboard Federation podcast.

Title lost

Robinson entered the final giant slalom of last season leading the discipline standings and set to clinch the first Crystal Globe of her career.

But she struggled with a gate in her first run at the World Cup finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, last March, veered off course and handed the title to Brignone.

Robinson said that failure "definitely kept the fire burning for this offseason to try and work harder to be more prepared and to mentally know how to deal with those higher intensity, higher pressure moments."

Olympics and COVID struggles

Robinson was New Zealand's youngest-ever Winter Olympian as a 16-year-old at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. Then she struggled with expectations at the 2022 Beijing Games after being locked out of her home country for two years due to New Zealand's strict border controls during the coronavirus pandemic.

This time she has a new plan.

"With it being in Cortina, which is a familiar World Cup venue for us, I kind of just want to go into it treating it just like another World Cup race," Robinson said.

During her first career race in Cortina, Robinson narrowly missed out on a medal at the 2021 world championships when she finished fourth in the giant slalom.

"Cortina was one of the first places that I ever skied in Europe because we had friends that were living there and so I've always loved Cortina," Robinson said. "Outside of New Zealand, I think it's definitely one of most beautiful places in the world."

Agencies via Xinhua