Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous both head into the Winter Olympics in Beijing as strong medal favourites. Photo / Photosport
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous both head into the Winter Olympics in Beijing as strong medal favourites. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
Kris Shannon runs through five reasons why Nico Porteous and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who are both set to star in the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, are so good for New Zealand sport.
1. Their sports are atypical to us
One of the highlights of the 2020/21 Summer Olympics was thestandout performances of Kiwi athletes in unexpected fields, like Dylan Schmidt on the trampoline or Anton Down-Jenkins on the springboard.
Nico Porteous and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott are also quite good at jumping and, as Schmidt and Down-Jenkins showed, that can be a nice change from the countless Kiwis who are good at sitting down in a boat.
Few in this country will have watched a huge amount of skiing or snowboarding, not since gazing enviously at more coordinated classmates on school trips to the mountain. And that variety adds much more spice to our typical Olympic diet.
From learning the rules to mastering the lingo, picking up unfamiliar sports is always one of the Olympics' primary joys, especially when snow is involved…
2. The Winter Olympics are great television
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won gold in the Snowboard Slopestyle event at the X Games in Aspen last month. Photo / Photosport
The Winter Olympics must be among the biggest sporting beneficiaries of modern advancements in video technology.
High-definition cameras and TVs have vastly improved all codes, but there's something about winter sports in HD that - excuse the technical jargon - looks real sick.
The fresh powder, the slick outfits, the hockey games in which you can actually see the puck, it's all been markedly enhanced since Annelise Coberger claimed New Zealand's first winter medal in 1992.
That television experience will be even better at these Games, with Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott giving us strong rooting interests during a sweltering February.
What better escape from our sweaty lounges than to transport to the slopes of, er, Beijing and watch a couple of genuine gold-medal contenders.
3. They're going to win medals
OK, this is a pretty complex one, see if you can follow. Olympic medals = good.
If you're still here, Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott heading into the Games with a golden pedigree means their respective events should stop the nation the way Lisa Carrington did about 16 times in Tokyo last year.
The pair's victories at the recent X Games in Aspen made them - barring a disastrous crash, which admittedly is a sickening possibility - almost guaranteed to stand on the podium this month.
They've been there before, of course, and it's worth dwelling on the fact these 20-year-olds own two of the three medals New Zealand have won in the winter, compared to the 137 we've racked up in the summer.
It's fair to say a gold medal in the halfpipe would be a tad more memorable than winning one in the 470 sailing class - the proof being that I don't remember that happening in 2012.
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous took home historic bronze medals for New Zealand at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. Photo / Photosport
Both Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott are great talkers. Their youth makes them less reliant on the cliches experienced sportspeople roll out during their millionth press conference, while merely competing in snow sports seems to make people earnestly excited about everything around them.
That's true of even something simple like how, after his X Games triumph, Porteous described the Olympics as "the big O-show".
That's objectively a far better name than Olympics. Why didn't the Greeks just go with that?
Porteous also acknowledged that explaining his winning run would sound to most like either a foreign language or complete gibberish, but that's all part of the fun.
After all, what sounds more interesting? 'He cracked that one through the covers for four.' Or: 'He dropped in switch, starting with a switch right 900 into a newly learnt switch left double 1440, then into back-to-back double 1620s, before finishing off with a huge left alley oop double 900.'
Gibberish, maybe, but interesting gibberish.
5. They're cool
Our athletes can be kinda lame. I'm not going to name names, but I am gonna make sweeping generalisations and name sports. Rowers? Lame. Sailors? Lame. Equestrians? Surprisingly cool.
Amid that not-top competition, Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott must be the coolest this country has.
There's a reason those school snow trips could be chastening experiences: no sportspeople look cooler than a snowboarder doing some sweet jumps or a skier flipping around a bunch while going down a halfpipe (still working on mastering that lingo).
And looking cool is a crucial part of capturing the uninitiated's attention.
Kids not into sport might check out the Summer Olympics and see a rower perform the same motion for eight minutes and then throw up. Those kids will probably stay not into sport.
But kids who watch the Winter Olympics this month will see from Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott a captivating whirl of energy, skill and technique, and those kids will be transfixed.
New Zealand sport needs to freshen things up and those two are as rad as we've got, which is a distinctly uncool thing to say.
