OPINION:

The Winter Olympics have always been of superficial interest to most Kiwi sports fans.

Despite the Southern Alps forming the backbone of the South Island, dotted with ski areas, skiing and
snowboarding is expensive and the sport has largely been treated as a participation-only, leisure activity.

Every four years, New Zealanders watch the Winter Games, marveling at sports such as alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, bobsleigh, skeleton, ski jumping, curling and ice hockey and when the Games are over, that’s usually all in terms of interest. .

However, the Beijing Winter Olympics, which officially kicked off last night with the Opening Ceremony, mark a turning point for New Zealand winter sports, especially snow sports.

While Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous were briefly thrust into the spotlight with their incredible efforts to win bronze in snowboarding and freeskiing four years ago in PyeongChang, South Korea, there was only one feeling that it was “cool” and the elation quickly faded. .

But I feel it’s different this time. Four years ago, snowboarding and freeskiing were just beginning to become mainstream.

Snowboarding made its debut at the Nagano Games in 1998, with freeskiing being an exhibition sport in Calgary in 1988 before medals were first awarded at the Albertville Games in 1992. They are presented annually at the X-Games, where the sport has long been on ESPN and attracts young people and where the focus seems to be on fun rather than winning.

New Zealand has never won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. Annelise Coberger’s silver medal in women’s slalom at the Albertville Games in 1992 is the closest we have. Our only other medals were the two bronze medals four years ago.

New Zealand are expected to win gold in Beijing. No more young fresh faces, Sadowski-Synnott and Porteous are the best in the world in their sport, they are favorites, world champions, X-Games champions. It’s remarkable to think that some people will be disappointed if they don’t make it to the podium.

Sadowski-Synnott tells me she is recognized every time she walks into the supermarket in Wānaka (population only 9000) but apart from that she is relatively unknown in her own country. That will change if she wins gold and maybe double gold at these Games. She will be elevated to the same rank as the other great Kiwi sportswomen.

Her first opportunity will be in the snowboard slopestyle final tomorrow, assuming she qualifies today. Then it’s Big Air next week.

After PyeongChang, there had been a big increase in the number of kids taking up snowboarding. Now, given a time zone that sees the Games airing after school over the next two weeks, there’s never been a better opportunity to capitalize on the expected success.

Porteous was dominant in the men’s freestyle halfpipe. He is also the favorite for gold, but he will not have his chance until the last weekend of the Games.

Then there’s alpine skier Alice Robinson who, at just 20, is recognized on the women’s World Cup circuit as having “the fastest turn on skis.”

Robinson has been causing a stir since posting the second-fastest second run at the 2019 world championships in Sweden aged 17 in the giant slalom. She then finished second in the World Cup final in Andorra before, at the start of the following season, winning her first World Cup race at Solden in Austria when she was just 17 years old.

Since Coberger and Claudia Riegler in the 1990s, New Zealand has not produced a world-class ski racer and Robinson has no medal chance in the GS and Super G in Beijing.

Alpine skiing is common. A grassroots Olympic sport, it’s massive in Europe and Robinson is a bigger name there than she is here. Hopefully that will change over the next two weeks.

New Zealand could win up to five medals. It might be a little optimistic, but three would be an incredible feat for a team of 15.

Compare that to the Summer Games where we performed superbly in Tokyo with 20 medals, but with a team of over 200.

Unlike Norway, which has a similar population and is expected to top the medal count in Beijing like it did four years ago, New Zealand will never compete to this extent. We just don’t have the climate, the resources, the facilities to even begin to compare ourselves to the Scandinavian powerhouse.

However, I think the likes of Sadowski-Synnott, Porteous and Robinson at these Games will inspire Kiwi children to follow in their footsteps more than any other Winter Olympics that have come before them.