Nico Porteous reacts after his run during the men's halfpipe final. Photo / AP.
Nico Porteous reacts after his run during the men's halfpipe final. Photo / AP.
Hey Annelise Coberger, look to your left, you finally have some company on the podium. If they look a bit young, Annelise, don't panic, it's not a trick of the mind.
They're 16!
You were a ripe old 20 when you won slalom silver at Albertville, so there was nothing to stop you celebrating with champagne should you have wished.
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous can't drink anything harder than Red Bull. Even crazier, when they cruise up to Cardrona this rapidly approaching winter, they're still eligible for child rates on their lift passes.
There might even be a few more kids than normal up there, too. Success loves company.
No, we're not suddenly going to become a nation of skiers and snowboarders – economic realities and geography will dictate that – but kids whose parents only know the alpine style of skiing might be bold enough to attempt the sort of aerial contortions that Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott performed in the halfpipe freeski and big air respectively.
For those of us who prefer to keep both feet on or near the ground, freestyle skiing and boarding is an inconceivable world of flips, twists and tendon-snapping landings.
It is madness, but it is clearly madness with a method. You'll have to ask elsewhere what impressed the judges about, say, Sadowski-Synnott's switch backside 900, or Porteous' high-octane second run down the halfpipe, but that is not what is important here.
What matters is that two teens have ended a 26-year wait for a Winter Olympic medal and they did so with a wide-eyed wonder that was infectious.
"I was sitting down at the bottom after my third run and they [officials] were like, 'you have to wait because you are in third'," Sadowki-Synnott said of the wait to see if her two-run combined score was enough for a medal.
"I just chilled and there were some heavy hitters [to come].
"The last girl went, who wasn't on the podium. She didn't land, and it was a pretty crazy feeling," she said, before adding something that seems amusing to those of us old enough to be her parent: "It's been a long journey."
The Wanaka resident has been skiing since preschool and boarding since nine. It's a similar story for Christchurch's Porteous, who started skiing on a family holiday to France when he was four.
At nine, he made the switch to freeskiing and two years ago, at 14, he became the youngest in the world to land a triple cork 1440, which will be meaningless to many of us, but you have to admit it sounds difficult.
Nico Porteous reacts after his run during the men's halfpipe final. Photo / AP.
Yesterday, Porteous provided one of those images that will remain indelible, as he struggled to comprehend his phenomenal second run score of 94.8, the score that would land him bronze behind Americans Alex Ferreira and David Wise
"I was happy with the way I skied and that was all I can be proud of. But for the judges to reflect that, it's insane," Porteous said.
"I definitely try to do my own tricks that no one else is doing and really push the sport. Today I couldn't have done better."
So certain was he that he couldn't do better, he essentially ceded his final run and watched and waited to see how many could pass him.
"I'd done as much as I could, and if that wasn't enough then it wasn't enough."
It was enough, though Beau-James Wells, from New Zealand's first family of freeski skiing, came closest to knocking him off the podium. A third New Zealander, Beau-James' brother Byron, had to pull out before the final after injuring himself training, while Porteous' older brother Miguel just missed qualifying for the final.
This was a landmark day for snow sports in New Zealand. Make no mistake about that.
There's still room on the top step of the dais but it no longer feels so far-fetched or far away.
Top qualifier Carlos Garcia-Knight catapults himself into the big air tomorrow. Should he fall short, there's a couple of 16-year-olds who'll be four years older and wiser in Beijing. Two 16-year-olds who already have something that, until yesterday, belonged to just one other New Zealander.
