Zrinka Ljutić (Photo: Private album)
LAKE TEKAPO, NEW ZEALAND, 17 August 2026 – Some ski races are about the stopwatch. Others are about what came before, and what comes next.
At Roundhill Ski Area in New Zealand’s Mackenzie Country, Zrinka Ljutić added her name to the 2026 Karl Burtscher Senior Memorial Race, bringing together three remarkable alpine stories: Croatia, Austria, and New Zealand.
For the 22-year-old Croatian, the victory comes during an intensive five-week Southern Hemisphere training camp as she prepares for the 2026/27 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup season and the 2027 FIS Alpine World Championships in Crans-Montana.
But the setting and the name of the race give the result a deeper resonance. More than half a century after Austrian skier and instructor Karl Burtscher Senior brought his alpine experience to the mountains of New Zealand, a Croatian skier whose own formative years were shaped in the Austrian Alps returned to the Southern Hemisphere and won a race held in his memory.
Different generations. Different countries. The same language: skiing.
The Karl Burtscher Senior Memorial Race is part of the living history of Roundhill, a family ski area whose story reaches back to the early 1960s.
Karl and Audrey Burtscher took over the ski field in 1973 and developed it into a commercial ski operation. Through the 1970s and 1980s, it was known as Tekapo Ski Field, a period when the mountain grew into an important destination for local families, school groups, and generations of young skiers. Karl and Audrey ultimately closed the ski field in 1990. After an 11-year closure, the next generation, Christian Burtscher and Karoline and Oskar Rieder, reopened it in 2001 under the name Roundhill Ski Area.
The legacy is therefore not preserved simply in a name. It is preserved in the mountain itself. In the people who learned to ski there. In families who returned year after year. And in a community that continues to pass a love of snow from one generation to the next.
The Tekapo Ski Club records that hundreds of children from the Timaru and Christchurch regions attended ski weeks at the field during the 1970s and 1980s, with some going on to become instructors and many later returning with their own children.
That spirit is at the heart of the memorial race.
Karl Burtscher: an Austrian alpine pioneer in New Zealand
The story of Karl Burtscher Senior is itself an international alpine story.
Born into a farming background in Austria, Burtscher was an accomplished skier and member of the Austrian Alpine Junior National Teambefore competing professionally in America. He later came to New Zealand, where he worked as a ski instructor at Mt Ruapehu before developing the Tekapo ski field. In 1973, Karl and his wife Audrey bought Richmond Station on the eastern shores of Lake Tekapo and committed themselves to a life in the high country.
It was a demanding environment. The Burtscher family farmed the land while operating the ski field, enduring harsh winters and periods without running water or electricity. Their children grew up skiing during the season, after lessons and farm chores – a childhood in which hard work and a love of snow were inseparable.
Under Karl and Audrey, the ski field developed rapidly. The access road was widened in 1974, and by 1976 a new chairlift, café and ticket office had been added. The operation continued until the field closed in 1990.
When Roundhill reopened in 2001, the next generation carried the family legacy forward. Today, Roundhill remains family-owned and operated by the Rieder family.
The Karl Burtscher Memorial Race is therefore not simply a tribute to a person. It is a tribute to a family, a mountain and an enduring belief in what skiing can give to a community.
Croatia, Austria and the making of a champion
That history makes Ljutić’s victory particularly fitting. Zrinka competes proudly for Croatia, carrying the colours of a country whose alpine skiing tradition was transformed by the Kostelić family.
In March 2025, she became the 2024/25 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Slalom Crystal Globe winner, following a breakthrough season in which she won three World Cup slaloms, in Semmering, Kranjska Gora and Courchevel, and became only the second Croatian woman to win the prestigious slalom title after Janica Kostelić.
But Croatia is only one part of Ljutić’s alpine identity. She spent much of her childhood in Innerkrems, Austria, where her passion for skiing developed and many of the qualities that continue to define her approach to the sport were formed.
Austria gave her an alpine home. Croatia gave her the flag under which she would ultimately compete on the world’s greatest stages. And New Zealand is now providing the mountain, snow and space in which she prepares for the next chapter.
That makes the Karl Burtscher Memorial a uniquely appropriate meeting point.
Burtscher was an Austrian skier who helped build a New Zealand ski culture. Ljutić is a Croatian skier shaped by the Austrian Alps who has come to New Zealand to prepare for the future.
Their stories are separated by generations, but connected by the same alpine values.
From Innerkrems to Lake Tekapo
Ljutić’s presence at Roundhill has an understated symmetry.
As a child in Austria, she learned the discipline of skiing, the early mornings, the repetition, the precision, the relationship with changing snow and terrain, and the understanding that progress is built turn by turn. Those foundations have since taken her to the highest level of international competition.
Her 2024/25 season established her among the world’s leading technical skiers. FIS records her as the youngest women’s Slalom Crystal Globe winner since Mikaela Shiffrin won the title at 20 in 2015.
Yet the preparation for the next season begins far from the spotlight. There are no World Cup crowds at Roundhill. No television cameras lining a World Cup finish area.
Instead, there is the mountain, the course, the snow, the training and the quiet intensity of an athlete preparing for another year at the highest level. And on this particular day, there was also the memory of the man whose name is attached to the race.
A new chapter begins.
Ljutić arrived in New Zealand on 4 August for a five-week pre-season on-snow training camp.
Her objectives are already clear: build towards the 2026/27 World Cup season and ultimately the 2027 FIS Alpine World Championships in Crans-Montana.
The Karl Burtscher Memorial victory becomes one moment within that preparation – but a meaningful one. It reminds us that elite sport does not exist in isolation. Every champion is connected to places, people and traditions that existed long before the medals arrived.
For Ljutić, one of those connections is Innerkrems in Austria. For Roundhill, it is Karl and Audrey Burtscher. And on 16 August 2026, those two stories met on a New Zealand mountain.
A victory with a story behind it
The significance of Ljutić’s victory is therefore found not only in who crossed the finish line first, but in whose name was above the start gate.
Karl Burtscher came from Austria with a passion for skiing and helped build a ski culture in a remote corner of New Zealand.
Zrinka Ljutić grew up in the Austrian alpine environment, chose to represent Croatia, became a World Cup Slalom discipline champion and has now travelled to New Zealand in pursuit of her next goals.
The mountain has changed. The sport has changed. The technology has changed. But the essential values remain remarkably familiar: work, resilience, precision, courage and a love of the mountains.
That is what the Karl Burtscher Senior Memorial Race celebrates. And this year, its winner could hardly have offered a more fitting continuation of the story.
Zrinka Ljutić came to Roundhill to train. She left her name in its history.
Source: www.croatiaweek.com
