Em­ma Gat­cliffe placed 48th in her de­but event, the women’s gi­ant slalom, at the In­ter­na­tion­al Ski and Snow­board Fed­er­a­tion (FIS) Alpine World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship in Tarvi­sio, Italy, on Monday (March 3).

She is the first fe­male Alpine Ski­er to rep­re­sent T&T in a FIS Alpine World Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of her old­er broth­er James, who was the first male Alpine Ski­er to rep­re­sent T&T and the first T&T ath­lete to com­pete in the event, held at St An­ton am Al­berg, Aus­tria from Jan­u­ary 16-25, 2023.

It was the first of two events for the T&T ski­er at the Cham­pi­onship, which opened on Feb­ru­ary 26 and runs un­til March 6.

In the gi­ant slalom, each ski­er makes two runs down two dif­fer­ent cours­es on the same slope. Both runs take place on the same day, usu­al­ly with the first run held in the morn­ing and the sec­ond run in the af­ter­noon. The times are added to­geth­er, and the fastest to­tal time de­ter­mines the win­ner.

Gat­cliffe, who was raised in Toron­to, Cana­da by Trinida­di­an fa­ther Glenn Gat­cliffe and French Cana­di­an moth­er Is­abelle Par­adis, start­ed the sec­ond run in 59th place and im­proved 11 spots, post­ing an ag­gre­gate time of 2:19.63

The 19-year-old, who was among the 65 par­tic­i­pants com­pletig the fast-paced event, was +14.91 be­hind win­ner Giorgina Col­lomb of Italy, who com­plet­ed the event in the time of 2:04.72. In sec­ond place was Switzer­land’s Ste­fanie Grob (+0.56) and in third, Amer­i­can Elis­a­beth Bo­cock (+0.62).

The track proved to be chal­leng­ing for sev­er­al rac­ers as out of the 81 par­tic­i­pants list­ed, 13 didn’t fin­ish ei­ther run, two were dis­qual­i­fied, and one ski­er did not start.

Like her broth­er, Gat­cliffe start­ed ski­ing at the age of three and fol­lowed the same path as she was part of the Geor­gian Peaks Ski Club in the Blue Moun­tains, On­tario from 2008-2020. She rep­re­sent­ed Team On­tario for three years at Un­der-14 and U-16 lev­els from 2018-2020.

From there, she at­tend­ed Green Moun­tain Val­ley School in Wait­s­field, Ver­mont, from 2020-2023 and was part of the Ski Acad­e­my/Board­ing School in Grades 10, 11 and 12.

Gat­cliffe is cur­rent­ly at­tend­ing St Lawrence Uni­ver­si­ty in Can­ton, New York and is rep­re­sent­ing the uni­ver­sity­at the Na­tion­al Col­le­giate Ath­let­ic As­so­ci­a­tion (NCAA) ski rac­ing in the US North­east. This is her sec­ond year on the team. She will grad­u­ate in 2027.

The ex­pe­ri­ence gained over the years has pre­pared her to com­pete against skiers from some 60 na­tions that are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pre­mier event.

The best in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes be­tween the ages of 15 and 20, in­clud­ing those who have al­ready made their de­but in the FIS World Cup, com­pete for the ti­tle of the six alpine ski­ing dis­ci­plines: down­hill and su­per-G for speed and tech­ni­cal dis­ci­plines such as gi­ant slalom and slalom, as well as in team com­pe­ti­tions (such as par­al­lel and team com­bined).

Who­ev­er is de­clared Ju­nior World Cham­pi­on ac­quires the right to par­tic­i­pate in the World Cup Fi­nals of the cur­rent sea­son.

Gat­cliffe is at the Cham­pi­onship with her broth­er as her coach and tech­ni­cal sup­port along with Walk­er Heny­on, a stu­dent – coach at St Lawrence Uni­ver­si­ty who al­so went to Green Moun­tain School with the sib­lings. She will next tack­le the Slalom on March 5.

Gat­cliffe is now in the com­pa­ny of Abi­gail Vieira, who was the first-ever fe­male ath­lete from T&T to par­tic­i­pate at a Youth Olympic Games in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land in 2020.