Charlie Guest: First British Woman to Win Europa Cup
Charlie Guest won three Europa Cup slalom races and reached a World Cup top fifteen. One of the most successful Scottish alpine ski racers.
Charlie Guest made history at Folgaria in January 2019. She won the women’s slalom at an FIS Alpine Europa Cup event, the first time a British woman had ever won a Europa Cup alpine race. It was a result that had been building through years of grinding work on the circuit, and it marked the beginning of the most productive phase of a career that had already overcome more than most racers face.
Born 30 December 1993 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Guest is one of the most successful Scottish alpine ski racers. She came through the British programme and into the Europa Cup at a point when the gap between the GB team’s resources and those of the continental nations was wider than ever. The result at Folgaria came in her mid-twenties, at an age when a racer should be near their peak. But in Guest’s case, that peak had been delayed by a severe back injury sustained in 2014 that required a full rehabilitation and recovery before she could return to the circuit at the level she had been targeting.
Three Europa Cup Wins
Having broken through in Folgaria, she won again at Hasliberg in January 2020 and then at Reiteralm in March 2021. Three Europa Cup wins, on a circuit that sits one level below the World Cup where the standard is high and the national programme backing of most competitors dwarfs what Britain provides, is a sequence of results that is simply not supposed to happen for British technical racers.
The Europa Cup circuit is where the next generation of World Cup racers develop, where women who will stand on World Cup podiums are refining their racing. Guest was beating them.
World Cup and the Beijing Olympics
Her best World Cup result came at the Schladming night slalom in January 2022: thirteenth place. Schladming at night, under lights, with one of the most technical slalom courses on the circuit in front of a crowd of thousands: to finish thirteenth there, against a full World Cup field, requires two very clean runs and the composure to hold it together on a course where the margin for error is measured in fractions of a second.
A month later she competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, finishing twenty-first in the women’s slalom. Beijing was the same Games at which Alex Tilley also competed, and there is a line of continuity in British women’s alpine racing across those careers that is worth noting.
After Racing
She retired following the 2023–24 season and has worked in alpine skiing media and commentary. The technical understanding she brings to that role, three Europa Cup wins, a World Cup top fifteen, a back injury and a full return, gives her commentary a depth that broadcast experience alone cannot provide.
Charlie Guest. First British woman to win a Europa Cup race. It happened at Folgaria, on a January afternoon in 2019.