Ski­er James Gat­cliffe is set to be in ac­tion in his fi­nal event at the 42nd In­ter­na­tion­al Ski and Snow­board Fed­er­a­tion (FIS) Alpine Ju­nior World Ski Cham­pi­onships in St An­ton am Arl­berg, Aus­tria, Wednesday.

Gat­cliffe, whose fa­ther is Trinida­di­an Glenn Gat­cliffe and moth­er is Cana­di­an Is­abelle Par­adis, was raised in Toron­to.

The 19-year-old is the lone T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the event and he will com­pete in the Slalom race, an alpine ski­ing and alpine snow­board­ing dis­ci­pline, in­volv­ing ski­ing be­tween poles or gates.

The num­ber of gates the com­peti­tors will chal­lenge is 60 with 58 turn­ing gates, in the slalom event.

The Lon­don-born ski­er will be look­ing to put in two good runs hop­ing for a podi­um fin­ish among the 129 par­tic­i­pants. He will com­pete in po­si­tion 93.

He opened com­pe­ti­tion at the World Ju­niors on Fri­day in the Su­per G but he did not fin­ish.

In his sec­ond in­di­vid­ual event, the Gi­ant Slalom on Sun­day, Gat­cliffe, placed 73rd among the 85 com­peti­tors who com­plet­ed both runs.

He clocked a to­tal time of two min­utes and 03.90 sec­onds–1:02.15 in the first run and 1:01.75 in the sec­ond–to fin­ish 20.29 sec­onds be­hind win­ner Al­ba Elezi Can­nafe­ri­na (1:43.61) of France.

The French­man was 0.32 clear of his ri­vals to take gold ahead of sil­ver medal­list Fin­land’s Ed­uard Hall­berg and An­dreas Os­car Sand­vik (1:44.04), who bagged bronze.

Gat­cliffe is the first male Alpine Ski­er to rep­re­sent this coun­try and is the first T&T ath­lete to com­pete in a FIS Alpine Ju­nior World Cham­pi­onship, which fea­tures the world’s best young alpine skiers, aged 16-20, from some 50 coun­tries.

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.