Luca Harrington left his best until last, jumping from 11th to bronze with his final run in the freestyle slopestyle final to become the fourth New Zealander to win a medal at the Winter Olympics.
Competing in his first Winter Olympics, the 21-year-old bounced back from a heavy crash landing in his second run to leap onto the dais – finishing behind Norway’s Birk Ruud and defending champion Alex Hall of the USA, who took silver.
After two runs, Harrington looked out of the running with scores of 27.55 and 35.51, ending his second run with a fall. But all you need is one good run in freestyle slopestyle and Harrington did just that, pulling off a switch right triple on the final jump on the course as part of a clean run. That scored an 85.15 and moved him to third spot – just 0.50 points off silver.
He then had to wait out as six more riders of the 12-man final had a chance to steal third place from him, including teammate Ben Barclay, who eventually finished eighth with a best of 69.40, which came on his opening run.
It was a nervous wait for Harrington, five went down and he retained his spot in the last medal position. It wasn’t until Tormod Frostad of Norway fell off his opening rail that Harrington knew he was an Olympic medallist – joining Annelise Coberger, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and fellow slopestyle skier Nico Porteous in New Zealand history.
Only Ruud was left to ride after sitting first from an opening effort of 86.28 and was able to have a victory ride to complete a low-scoring final in tricky conditions.
Harrington said he had the self-belief despite failing to complete a clean run on his first two attempts.
“I can’t even describe it. This has been a childhood dream. I didn’t think I was going to make it after those first two runs. We didn’t have the best light out there. But I stood at the top of that last run and put a smile on my face and just embraced what an honour it was to be standing up there with fellow athletes and teammate Ben,” Harrington told Sky Sport.
“I just didn’t want to play it safe. I wanted to leave it all out there on the course. I did that. To believe I’m wearing an Olympic bronze medal right now is pretty surreal.”
It is the third straight Winter Olympics that New Zealand has claimed multiple medals, after Sadowski-Synnott took silver yesterday in Big Air.
Harrington kept his composure after promising two runs with costly errors. On his second run he crashed the landing on a switch right triple and was slow to get up at first but eventually walked off the course. He picked himself up and on his final run was able to stick the landing on the switch right triple which secured bronze.
Harrington was “freaking out” after two failures to open the competition.
“It was a tough moment for me. For me, it’s pretty rare, I don’t land two runs so that was definitely a shock. Luckily we have a third run here at the Olympics. I was definitely freaking out a bit. I didn’t know what to do whether to change the plan or to keep it going. I had that time to grieve for a moment and get back into the zone. Managed to pull it off.
“Today was a battle, we didn’t get perfect conditions but that’s part of our sport – we had to battle through that. I was feeling a lot of pressure, a lot of crazy emotions going on being here at the Olympics – being in the finals and wanting to do everyone proud. I did not land my first two runs which made that ever tougher – but on that final run took a step back, embraced the moment and managed to gain that confidence and go through my full run a clean. I’m extremely proud of that,” he said.
Barclay opened with a strong 69.40 but came off the rails early on his second and third attempts.