Skier James Gatcliffe placed 36th in the slalom at the 42nd International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) Alpine Junior World Ski Championships in St Anton am Arlberg, Austria, on Wednesday.
It was the final event for Gatcliffe, who is the son of Trinidadian Glenn Gatcliffe and Canadian Isabelle Paradis, at the Championships for skiers, aged 16-20, from some 50 countries. He is the first male Alpine Skier to represent this country and the first T&T athlete to compete in a FIS Alpine Junior Worlds.
The lone T&T representative completed the slalom (an alpine skiing discipline, involving skiing between poles or gates) in a combined time of two minutes and 00.22 seconds.
He made the first run in 1:02.56 to be in 54th spot, improving tremendously in the second run clocking 57.66 – to finish some 21.01 seconds off the winner Italy’s Corrado Barbera (1:39.21). The Italian was 0.29 clear of silver medallist Adam Hofstedt of Sweden (1:39.50) who came up from 10th position and Antoine Azzolin of France took bronze, with a combined time of 1:39.59 after finishing the first heat in fifth place.
London-born Gatcliffe was among the 44 skiers completing the two runs out of the 129 participants. It was his third event at the nine-day Championship which ended Wednesday.
In his opening event on Friday, the Super G, he did not finish but returned on Sunday in the Giant Slalom and placed 73rd among the 85 competitors who completed both runs. He clocked a total time of 2:03.90–1:02.15 in the first run and 1:01.75 in the second–to finish 20.29 seconds behind gold medallist Alba Elezi Cannaferina (1:43.61) of France.
Gatcliffe, who started skiing at the age of three, is following in the footsteps of Abigail Vieira, who was the first-ever athlete from T&T to participate at a Youth Olympic Games (Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games), and the first Alpine Skier from Team TTO to participate at any Olympic event.