Having had her career almost derailed by injury, Arrowtown ski racer Alaska Speedy has just scored two breakthrough wins.

At Queenstown’s Coronet Peak, the 17-year-old won the senior and junior women’s national giant slalom (GS) titles for the first time.

Queenstown superstar Alice Robinson, who did not compete this time, won the senior title the past three years.

Then, even more significantly, Alaska was top Australasian in GS in the Australia New Zealand (ANC) Cup contested on Canterbury’s Mt Hutt and Coronet Peak — in the latter race she beat Aussie Olympian Madi Hoffman.

As a result, she won the coveted ‘yellow bib’ that gives her advantageous top-31 starting positions in Europa/Nor-Am Cup races and a World Cup GS start.

Countering disappointing local early-season snow conditions, Alaska, who had not raced since March, made a mercy dash to Europe for two weeks’ glacier training in Zermatt, Switzerland and a week’s indoor slope training in Belgium.

Her trip was funded from a $10,000 scholarship her club in Aspen, in the United States, had gifted her.

Alaska’s recent successes are testament to her determination to recover from injury breaks that curtailed her career for about two years.

Arriving to train in France in January, 2022, she broke her right leg on her first day on snow.

Thanks to a Covid lockdown, she remained in France rehabbing her leg for about six months.

Then, back in NZ for winter, she refractured the leg.

The injury also caused to drop a lot of weight, however Alaska never doubted she would return to racing.

“I would say most people who have an injury in teenage years don’t ever recover, especially when they’re at the top and they have to get back up,” Alaska’s mum Kate Speedy says.

Alaska’s recovery, Kate adds, also owes a lot to the likes of coach and PT Ben Griffin, physio Pete Forch and sport and exercise physician Sarah Beable.

Since she was 14, she has also trained with Nils Coberger’s Coberger Academy, and she is now coached by Willis Feasy.

Commenting on her recent successes, Feasy says “her effort on snow is amazing, she tries really hard, listens really carefully to feedback and takes it all onboard”.

Alaska says following in Robinson’s tracks definitely helps.

“Because Alice has done so well, when I work with coaches overseas it kind of feels like they respect me more.”

She feels she will move more towards the speed disciplines of downhill and super-G, as, befitting her name, speed comes easily to her — early this year she had three top-10 Nor-Am Cup downhill results, and a top-30 finish in Nor-Am standings.

Her immediate aim is to break into the NZ B team, and this week she left for races in Chile to try and reduce her FIS points.

However, her overriding goal’s to make the World Cup circuit.

scoop@scene.co.nz