Jernej Slivnik is a 21-year-old top para-athlete from Hrusica, Slovenia. Slivnik signed up for paraalpine skiing, competes in the World Cup, and in past years has competed in the World Championship and the Paralympic Games. Today, with the help of his trainer Roman Podlipnik, otherwise a gymnasium professor of physical education, he competes in giant slalom and slalom.
Slivnik is a paraplegic, he had a car accident at the age of five. He was already skiing before the accident. After the accident he was only interested in whether he would ever ski again. He managed to do that.
Slivnik first encountered a monoski, a ski device adapted for the disabled, when he was nine years old, at a demonstration camp for the disabled in Kranjska Gora (Slovenia’s ski resort), organized by Slovenian Paralympian Gal Jakic. Slivnik has been skiing since 2009.
Slivnik has been skiing for 13 years, and at the professional level for the last seven years. Initially, Slivnik was a member of Ski club Radovljica for ten years, and for the last years has been a member of ASK Kranjska Gora.
In 2015, Jernej went to his first competition in the Netherlands (in the city of Landgraaf), where he also won his first competition in the youth competition. In January 2016, as a 15-year-old, he made his debut at the World Cup in para-alpine skiing, as a preliminary competitor in Kranjska Gora.
In the 2016/2017 season, he reached the Paralympic standard, and he repeated this for Paralympic Games in Beijing. At the Paralympic Games in South Korea in 2018, he achieved a good 12th place in the slalom, but resigned in the giant slalom. At his first world championship, which was jointly hosted by Kranjska Gora and Sella Nevea in 2019, he was 10th in the slalom and 17th in the giant slalom. At the World Championships in Lillehammer, he significantly improved his ranking: he was 7th in the giant slalom and 4th in the slalom.
He also achieved two victories in the European Cup: twice he was the fastest in the giant slalom in Kaurental. In the World Cup, he took 4th place in the slalom twice, on 22 and 23 January 2021 in Veysonnaz. He won the combination in four matches of the Austrian Open Championship, and for the first time he also competed in a super giant slalom match.
So young and already such a promising athlete!
Source: https://peking2022.zsis.si/jernej-slivnik/
