Millie Knight wants to make Canterbury proud as she prepares to go for gold in the last major global competition before the next Winter Paralympics.

The visually-impaired skier has been in superb form in the IPC World Cup series and celebrated her 18th birthday at the weekend with four gold medals to take her tally to seven, to go with three silvers and a bronze in the opening three rounds of the season.

The King’s School pupil remains focused on success in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in her second Paralympic Games in March 2018 but first-up is the World Para Alpine Skiing Championships which get underway in Tarvisio, Italy, on Sunday, with her Knight's first race on Wednesday.

Knight was laid low by a mystery illness from August 9 until the start of December but produced an amazing recovery to begin the season with a flurry of gold medals in Kuhtai, Austria, and St Moritz, Switzerland, before Christmas and at Innerkrems, Austria, last weekend where she clocked 101kph at one point of the downhill race.

She said: “I feel strong now. I still don’t know what it was but hopefully it’s gone for good.

“It took a lot of hard work to come back from being in that hospital bed. I was trying to do calf raises and looking for water bottles to do bicep curls.

“I worked so hard to get my strength back. I’ve had a couple of hairy moments in SuperG when had my strength not been there, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Knight and new guide Brett Wild have formed a formidable partnership this season and she said: “He’s amazing, absolutely fantastic. If he tells me to tuck or go faster, I will, because he knows what I am capable of.

“Hopefully, we’ll be together long-term, at least until after the Paralympics. We are getting better all the time. The processes come before the outcome and we are learning and getting better every time we race and with every mile we cover.”

Knight doesn’t like to predict success but added: “I might have to get a bigger trophy cabinet. I couldn’t have wished for a better start to the season.”

Knight led the World Cup standings in downhill, slalom and SuperG disciplines ahead of this week’s World Cup in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia and was second overall in the giant slalom behind Slovakia’s Henrieta Farkasova, a five-time Paralympic champion.

Knight, however, chose to miss the event in favour of further training in Austria and she admitted: “A clean sweep was not our aim coming into the season but you never know.

“I’ve been trying to work out all the maths and (not going to Slovenia) might cost us but we can’t worry too much about what happens. We’ll have to wait and see.”