Gina Hathorn: Britain's First World Cup Podium
Gina Hathorn finished second at Grindelwald in January 1967, the first British alpine skier to stand on a World Cup podium, and 4th at the 1968 Olympics.
Gina Hathorn was the first British alpine skier, male or female, to stand on a World Cup podium. On 10 January 1967, in the first season of the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, she finished second in the women’s slalom at Grindelwald, Switzerland, behind Annie Famose of France. It is one of the very few World Cup podiums in British alpine racing history, and it has remained underacknowledged for almost six decades.
Born 6 July 1946, Hathorn was one of the British alpine racing generation who came of age at a time when Britain still produced serious competitive skiers, particularly in the technical disciplines. Slalom rewarded technique and intelligence over the pure athletic development of downhill, and Hathorn had both.
The Grindelwald result
The 1966-67 season was the inaugural FIS Alpine Ski World Cup. The Grindelwald women’s slalom on 10 January 1967 produced one of the strongest fields of the early World Cup era. Annie Famose, the French slalom champion of that season, won the race. Hathorn finished second. Isabelle Mir of France was third. The official result is recorded in the FIS database.
Hathorn never won a World Cup race. According to Olympedia, that Grindelwald second place was her only career World Cup podium, alongside 22 top-ten finishes in slalom and giant slalom across the six seasons she competed (1966 to 1972). In the context of British alpine racing, where podiums of any kind are rare and wins are rarer still, that one result is one of the most significant in the sport’s British history.
Three Winter Olympics
She competed at three consecutive Winter Olympic Games: Innsbruck 1964, Grenoble 1968, and Sapporo 1972. It was at Grenoble in February 1968 that she produced what remains one of the finest results in British Olympic alpine skiing history: fourth place in the women’s slalom. Fourth is the cruelest result in sport. Hathorn finished within roughly three hundredths of a second of the bronze medal.
The context matters too. The 1968 Winter Olympics were held at altitude in France, and the slalom field that year included some of the finest technical skiers in the world. A fourth place for a British woman, in 1968, in a slalom at the Games. It should be a better-known result than it is.
She also served as the Great Britain flagbearer at the 1968 Closing Ceremony.
Underrecognised
Hathorn’s place in British skiing history is considerable and underacknowledged. Her Grindelwald podium predates Bartelski’s 1981 Val Gardena result by fourteen years, Baxter’s 2002 Olympic medal by thirty-five, and Ryding’s 2022 Kitzbühel win by fifty-five. The 1967 podium has been largely lost from mainstream British sporting consciousness, partly because the World Cup was new and received little coverage in Britain at the time, and partly because British skiing has always struggled to maintain its own institutional memory.
That memory exists here: Gina Hathorn stood on a World Cup podium in January 1967, finishing second in slalom at Grindelwald. She is the first Briton who can say so.
Gina Hathorn was the first British alpine skier to stand on a World Cup podium. Her second place at the Grindelwald slalom on 10 January 1967, behind winner Annie Famose, remained Britain’s only podium until Konrad Bartelski’s Val Gardena downhill in 1981, and is the only British women’s World Cup podium to date.