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.
