Kiwi rising: How New Zealand set an Olympic snowboarding record and became a power on snow

LIVIGNO, Italy — The first five-time Olympic medalist in the colorful, unpredictable sport of snowboarding comes from a colorful, unexpected place: New Zealand.

The honor belongs to Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, a 24-year-old from Wanaka in New Zealand's Southern Lakes region — a world away from this sport's roots in the United States.

Sadowski-Synnott took second place in slopestyle Wednesday for her second silver medal of the Milan Cortina Games and fifth overall. That made her the centerpiece of the latest version of the haka — a ritual Kiwi celebration that used to be seen primarily at rugby matches but has been appearing more at halfpipes, slopestyle courses and big air jumps of late.

“Just being a Kiwi, we’re always a bit of the underdogs,” Sadowski-Synnott said. “Any chance we get to show who we are on the world stage, we’ll try to do our best.”

She is the most striking example of a trend that's been brewing for about a decade now. Once known as the place where Shaun White, Chloe Kim and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere used to head for summertime training at a resort called Cardrona, New Zealand is investing its own money into its own athletes.

“We get asked that question a lot — kind of, ‘What’s in the water?'” said Luke Hetzel, the general manager of high performance at Snow Sports New Zealand. “It's going to be impossible to put a finger on why, but there've been trailblazers in New Zealand in all the different sports.”

Jossi Wells, Christy Prior and Sam Smoothy were among those who blazed a trail in the park and pipe and got Kiwis thinking about what was possible on the international sports landscape beyond the All Blacks' traditional dominance in rugby.

These days, New Zealand is a genuine threat at the Winter Olympics.

All but one of the 17 athletes on its Olympic roster are competing at the Livigno Snow Park, either in snowboarding or freeskiing. Seven of the 11 who have competed so far at these Games have made a final. Sadowski-Synnott's silver was the country's third medal of the Games at the snowpark (Luca Harrington won bronze in ski slopestyle). That's the same as the United States.

“They have a small group of riders and they don't have the same kind of disposable mindset of, ‘Oh, we can just fill it with another good rider,'” said Lyon Farrell, the Kiwi snowboarder who finished eighth in big air and 15th in slopestyle. “They don't have that depth. They really support their guys from an early age and build them up from a development side.”

Though snowboarding and skiing tend to occupy their own silos, there's very little of that in New Zealand, which bundles all its resources under an umbrella that supports both sports.

Exhibit A of the benefits comes from the Melville Ives family, which produced 19-year-old twin brothers Cam and Finley. Cam is a snowboarder, Finley is a freeskier.

“Their dad and mom have been working with them since they were like 3 years old,” Hetzel said. “They were the first kids on the chairlift every year. They came to us when they were about 12. They're singularly focused on snowboarding and skiing. That lends itself to doing very well.”

While White, Kim and many more of the trailblazers of this sport at the Olympic level had only one event, the halfpipe, to amass their medals, the addition of slopestyle and big air in 2018 added new opportunities for countries, and athletes, to break through.

Sadowski-Synnott is the biggest beneficiary.

She now has one gold medal (2022 slopestyle), three silvers (two this year and a 2022 big air) and one bronze (2018 big air). Those all head back to a country that also produced 2022 ski halfpipe champion Nico Porteous, who stepped away from the competitive side of his sport after that win.

Not long ago, an athlete like Porteous, or even Sadowski-Synnott, might have been viewed as once-in-a-generation talents for the Kiwis. Now, it appears, there's a pipeline.

“Every year, it's been bigger and better,” Hetzel said. “We focus so much on what we do, who we work with and how we do it. The results are the outcome of the process here.”