Manx Winter Olympian Zoe Gillings-Brier claimed an impressive third place at the Cortina D’Ampezzio European Cup snowboard cross competition in Italy on Monday.
Gillings-Brier has spent the last 11 months off snow following her ninth place finish at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games and only returned to the Alps a few weeks ago.
Even though Zoe has spent a limited time on the snow, at present the 29-year-old from Ronague is focussing on training freestyle snowboard techniques that will help her go for gold in snowboard cross at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics.
With a strong field of competition in Italy, Zoe qualified into the heats in fifth place and she then won both of her quarter-final and semi-final heats to progress.
Unfortunately Gillings-Brier had no lane choice in the final because of her qualification time.
However, despite being fourth into the first berm and racing head-to-head against the Italian athlete who had memorably just edged Zoe into the final in Sochi by a matter of centimetres, Zoe managed to pass into third place where she stayed for the remainder of the race.
Speaking after the race, Gillings-Brier commented: ‘I’m really happy with today’s result, it was a real shock.
‘It was a strong field and, despite not being on snow for just under a year and not doing any snowboard cross training whatsoever, I was really happy with my performance.
‘I’d like to say a huge huge thank you to Celtic Associates in the Isle of Man.’ continued the multiple Isle of Man Sportswoman of the Year.
‘They are my sole support from the Isle of Man and without them I wouldn’t have been able to podium.’
Zoe now heads back to Aosta in Italy to continue her freestyle training with ‘Why Aint you Jibbin’ owners Steve Addicott and Olympian/friend Kate Foster.
Gillings-Brier will then return to concentrate 100 per cent on snowboard cross in June this year.
Since losing UK Sport funding, Zoe has only been able to continue in the sport thanks to setting up her online razor delivery company - PoundShaveClub.com - of which she recently received a significant amount of investment funding, as well as thanks to her loyal Manx sponsor, Celtic Associates.