Two kids from one small town ski New Zealand to its greatest Games

Nico Porteous has dropped the curtain on New Zealand’s greatest ever Winter Games, overcoming the elements and a field of established champions to win the Olympic freeski halfpipe title. The 20-year-old from the South Island resort town of Wanaka soared and spun to New Zealand’s second ever gold medal at a Winter Olympics on Saturday, two weeks to the day after Zoi Sadowski-Synnott’s history-making first.

Remarkably, only 12 of the 91 nations competing at the Beijing Games have managed to win more golds than two Kiwi athletes from a tiny lakeside hamlet. “We both come from a town of ten thousand people, and skiing and snowboarding is our passion,” Porteous said. “We just absolutely love it. When Zoi won her gold in slopestyle it was such a motivational moment for myself. I really, really, really wanted it, and that just made me put my head down and really work hard.”

Porteous didn’t win halfpipe’s most prestigious contest so much as survive it. On a blustery morning in the mountain village of Taizicheng, contestants were strewn across the course after crashes and many were left wondering if the competition should have been postponed. Had it not been the final event at the Genting Snow Park with Sunday’s closing ceremony fast approaching, it might have been.

Unlike four years ago in Pyeongchang when he won a surprise bronze as a teenage outsider, Porteous went off as the hot favourite in Saturday’s final. Twelve entrants made three trips each down the 200m-long course known as the Secret Garden with the best score counting towards their finishing position.

The reigning world and X Games champion immediately made good on advance billing, setting the target with a score of 93.00 that none of his rivals could approach.