Piera won the Giant Slalom National Championship title at the age of 15 in her first year of FIS. She has competed in five World Championships, four World Juniors Championships and represented NZ at the 2012 Youth Olympic Games. Piera is a member of the New Zealand Ski Women'sTeam.
Career best result at the 2021 FIS World Ski Championships Parallel , finishing in 12th place. First NZ skier to score World Cup points in 15 years - Killington, USA, November 2018; Two 15 FIS point Giant Slalom results with two 1st place podiums on consecutive days at Turnau, Austria from a field of 67 competitors.
Biography
Piera was the 2016 women’s and junior women’s national Giant Slalom and Super-G champion, 2016 NZ Overall National Ladies’ Champion, NZ National Junior Ladies’ Champion, and was the winner of the Australia New Zealand Continental Cup Super-G Series in 2016. Other career highlights include:
Piera spends New Zealand winters training at the High Performance Centre at Cardrona Alpine Resort before travelling to the Northern Hemisphere to train and compete in Europe and North America. Piera has been coached by Jonny Rice since her first year of FIS and together they have made the step up to top level events such as World Cup, Europa Cup, World Championships and Junior World Championship races. She was named one of the NZ Herald Future Stars and was named 2016 Hawke’s Bay Junior Sports Person of the Year.
Piera was crowned women’s and junior women’s national Giant Slalom champion for the third time in 2016. She is the current NZ National Ladies’ Super-G Champion and is NZ's top ranked women's Slalom racer.
In 2018 Piera earned the NZ national titles for Giant Slalom and Slalom and was the ANC Giant Slalom and Slalom Yellow Bib winner, securing her a spot on the FIS World Cup circuit and a bib start of 30 at Europa Cup and Nor Am events. During the southern hemisphere winter she scored two PBs with an 11 FIS point result in GS and 12 point result in Slalom. Piera was named 2018 Sport Hawke's Bay People's Choice Athlete of the Year.
She opened the 2019 season with a career best performance, skiing from start bib 59 to finish 26th in the Slalom World Cup at the Killington Cup in Vermont, USA. She is the first NZ athlete to achieve a top 30 result and score World Cup points in 15 years. Piera went on to achieve three first places at the Far East Cup series in Taiwoo, China, and then first and third place at the Far East Cup series in Wanlong, China. She finished the 2018/19 season world ranked 42 in Giant Slalom and 68 in Slalom from 3991 FIS registered female athletes.
In 2021 Piera represented New Zealand at the FIS World Ski Championships and achieved a career best result with a 12th place finish in the Parallel event.
Check out more of Piera's results here, or follow her on social media and via her website.
