Imagine what Alice Robinson could do on two good knees.
The Queenstown teenager has capped off a tremendous 12 months on the slopes with an ASB Otago Sports Award.
The 18-year-old alpine skier has been named Mercy Hospital Junior Sports Woman of the Year, ahead of swimmer Erika Fairweather and snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott.
Robinson has had a year jammed with highlights.
At the top of the list was her maiden world cup victory. She beat world champion Mikaela Shiffrin by 0.06sec in the giant slalom event in Austria.
It was the opening world cup event of the season and she won despite injuring her left knee in the build-up to the event.
‘‘That was really exciting. In the last race of the year before I’d got second to her and that was like my big breakthrough,’’ Robinson said.
‘‘Coming into the new season ... no-one really knew how everyone was skiing.
‘‘I think that was my favourite race of the year just because everyone was so excited about it. The crowd was great and it is probably the hardest slope for women and probably the most difficult because there is like this massive steep face.’’
But she obtained a second opinion a month later and was able to resume training and racing.
‘‘I missed out on about six weeks of pretty crucial training which was quite tough.’’
Robinson quickly caught up, though. She won her second world cup race in February at the event in Slovenia.
That result, along with her many other top-10 finishes in between, enabled her to join three others as the joint No1-ranked skier in the women’s giant slalom.
The Otago Sports Award was a very welcome bonus.
‘‘It is super exciting because that category I was in was pretty competitive,’’ she said.
‘‘This year’s finalists of this category are truly an amazing group of young, talented and committed Otago women, taking their skills and successes to the world stage, be it on the mountains or in the swimming pools,’’ Mercy Hospital chief executive Richard Whitney said in a statement.
He congratulated all the finalists.
Robinson also won the emerging talent award at the Halberg Awards earlier this year.
No fancy dinner that night either as she was still overseas. But her parents were able to accept the award on her behalf.
Robinson has been doing plenty of strength and conditioning training during lockdown but is itching to get back up the mountain, whenever that may be.
She joked a lighthearted suggestion to build a makeshift ski track on the staircase at home may even have merit.
‘‘That’s a good idea. Yeah, I might give that a go next time.’’
