November 10, 2020 – Sixteen-year-old Zrinka Ljutic, a promising Croatian skier, achieved an excellent result in the first FIS giant slalom race of her career.
Index.hr reports that with a starting number 114, she finished the first run in 33rd place, and in the second run, she finished in 21st with the second-best time of the second run.
The FIS races are just below the World Cup races, in which the best skiers in the world participate, and in which the last Croatian representatives were Janica Kostelic, Ana Jelusic, and Nika Fleiss.
With this result, Ljutic won 51.36 FIS points, the most that any Croatian skiers won in their first FIS race. At the beginning of 2020, Ljutic became the best skier in the world, winning as many as four gold medals at the strongest international competition for young skiers.
Sixteen-year-old Zrinka has a dream season behind her; she is untouchable in slalom and giant slalom, which she proved at the Alpe Cimbra Cup, the unofficial world championship for younger ages, once known as the Topolino Trophy.
Behind these successes stand the harmonious Ljutic family. Dad Amir and four children, 17-year-old Tvrtko, 16-year-old Zrinka, 15-year-old Dora, and 13-year-old Hrvoje, spend most of the year in Innerkrems, Austria, where they train and continue learning.
Despite spending more than nine months a year in the snow, Zrinka and her older brother are great surfers. Her brother is also one of the best young surfers in Europe in the freestyle discipline.
“At sea, we train, surf, windsurf, freestyle. We’ve been doing it for a long time, and we’re good at it, but it fell into the background; it just became a hobby. We train, we have excellent training conditions, we get away from skiing and everything,” Zrinka told Dnevnik Nova TV.
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