Australia may not have an Alpine ski racer of its own to challenge for Winter Olympic gold next year -- but in Sydney-born Alice Robinson, who's now flying the flag brilliantly for New Zealand, it still has a special athlete to cheer.
The 24-year-old became the first Alpine skier from New Zealand ever to win a World Cup Super-G race on Sunday when she triumphed in St Moritz -- the seventh global victory of her burgeoning career.
After starting sixth on the Swiss resort's Corviglia piste, Robinson sped down the course in one minute 14.84 seconds, to beat France's Romane Miradoli by 0.08sec and Italian former Olympic downhill champion Sofia Goggia by 0.19sec.
American great Lindsey Vonn, who at 41 became the oldest World Cup winner on Friday and was second in another downhill on Saturday, completed her historic week by finishing fourth, just 0.08sec off the podium.
Robinson had never previously finished higher than fourth in a World Cup Super-G with all her six previous wins -- including two so far this season -- having come in giant slaloms.
But in St Moritz, she demonstrated that she could be in the hunt for two golds in February's Milan-Cortina Olympics, even if it was a victory that she hadn't really expected.
"Today I was really wanting to put some more intensity on the day, and more focus, because I feel like in the past in Super-G I've always not felt like I've seen myself as a competitor," she said.
"I really wanted to remind myself that this is a real race, you're in this. I still wasn't expecting a win, though."
Already the most successful woman Alpine ski racer from outside North America and Europe, Robinson can't stop setting new landmarks for Oceanian skiing.
After moving with with her parents and two siblings across the Tasman to Queenstown when she was four years old, Robinson began her prodigious rise just four years later when she was an eight-year-old racing with the Queenstown Alpine Ski team.
At 16, she became New Zealand's youngest ever competitor at a Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, and was crowned the national champion in both slalom and giant slalom in her first senior season.
In 2018-19, she earned the country's first World Cup medal in 17 years, and inthe following season, took her maiden World Cup win in Solden, Austria. That ws NZ's first World Cup win since Claudia Riegler back in 1997.
Second in the World Cup giant slalom standings last season, her next major landmark was to grab silver at the world championships in Saalbach earlier this year, New Zealand's first medal ever at the event.
"It's really awesome in a sport like alpine ski racing to bring a country like New Zealand to the medal table. It's so cool, and I'm just really proud,” she said then, and it appears Alice's adventures in winter wonderland are only just beginning.
