Move aside Gu, here comes Su: Teenager wins 'insane' Beijing Winter Olympics gold

BEIJING: Step aside Eileen Gu. Hosts China have a new teenage hero at the Beijing Olympics after 17-year-old Su Yiming on Tuesday (Feb 15) added an emphatic snowboard Big Air gold to his controversial silver.

Su scorched to the Big Air title with a runaway score of 182.50 to win his second medal at the Games, having been unlucky to only come away with silver in last week's slopestyle.

The former child actor was so good that he had the title firmly in the bag even before his third and final run.

Su's latest remarkable success went viral on China's Twitter-like Weibo, where a hashtag about it clocked up about 750 million views in just a few hours.

He took a dominant gold ahead of Norway's Mons Roisland, on 171.75, with Canada's Max Parrot - the slopestyle winner - taking bronze with 170.25.

Su has competed in just six World Cup events and last week already became the first men's snowboarding Olympic medallist in China's history.

"This feels insane, it's something I've never experienced before ... I can't believe I got this gold," said Su, for whom this was an early birthday present - he turns 18 on Friday.

"I trained every day for the past four years. Every night I was dreaming about this moment."

When he was eight, Su appeared in the epic action movie The Taking of Tiger Mountain, before deciding to fully dedicate himself to snowboarding.

With hair that tumbles down below his ears, he still has something of the film star about him.

Su's silver in the slopestyle had been contentious, with many experts saying that he should have been awarded gold ahead of Parrot.

Iztok Sumatic, the head judge in Beijing, subsequently told the snowboarding magazine Whitelines that they made a mistake in the scoring of Parrot.

Su put all that behind him