ALPINE SKIING: Australia's highest ranked women's alpine skier, 17-year-old Greta Small, stretched her unbeaten record on home snow to seven victories on day 1 of the National Snowsport Championships at Thredbo resort.
ALPINE SKIING: Australia's highest ranked women's alpine skier, 17-year-old Greta Small, stretched her unbeaten record on home snow to seven victories when she won a hard fought International Ski Federation slalom event on day 1 of the National Snowsport Championships at Thredbo resort.
The win also enabled Small, the winner of the last two national open slalom championships, to secure her third consecutive Australian junior slalom title.
The plucky teenager, who is eyeing a place in Australia's Winter Olympic Games team in Sochi, Russia, in February, finished the two run event just 0.13 of a second faster than fellow Aussie Emily Bamford and 0.85 of a second quicker than Canadian Randa Teschner.
For the first time in her developing career, Small went into the event as the highest ranked competitor among the 34 athletes from eight countries.
Small said that it was the toughest event she has experienced for some time.
"Going in as the number one ranked puts pressure on to hold that place so I'm happy I was able to do that," Small said.
Small displayed her hallmark fighting qualities and was able to adapt her technique to master the 20 centimetres of fresh overnight snow.
"It was the toughest conditions I have skied in a long, long time," Small said.
"I'm pretty happy to come away with a win in conditions like that.
"As soon as I saw the conditions, I knew it was going to be a tough race and that I needed to hang in there and fight until the last gate.
"In those conditions you have to be more technical, basically stay in the course and fight the whole way down."
"My runs were not without mistakes but I managed to hang in there. It definitely was not my best skiing so I just had to go out there and try my best," Small added.
And while Small left the hill with a smile on her face fellow Australian Lavinia Chrystal, who needs to perform well during the domestic season if she is to make the Australian Sochi team after missing 18 months through injury, missed gate 19 in her first run and did not ski in the second.
In the men's event, a strong international field of 65 athletes from 12 countries kept Australian skiers from finishing any higher than 10th.
Luc Chevalier was the best performing Australian, finishing behind an American 1-2-3 clean-sweep by Will Brandenburg, David Chodounsky and Tim Kelley.
Australians Dominic Demschar placed 12th, Daniel Demschar 14th and Sam Robertson 15th, each experienced an encouraging day.
Ross Peraudo (DNF), Luke Laidlaw and Mike Rishworth, who were both disqualified, will all be looking for improvement when racing in the Snowsport Championships continues at Thredbo Wednesday afternoon with an ANC slalom event.
