Keep up or lose touch.
Returning from a major injury at the start of the 2025 season, this was where snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott found herself.
“Knowing that it was Olympic qualifying, I just knew that I had to do whatever I could to get those results and when I was going through the injury, I just really wanted to make sure that I didn’t feel left behind in the progression,” she explains.
“Being in a sport that progresses so fast and there are new tricks being learned every couple of months, I wanted to make sure that I worked hard enough that I was still a part of that progression and on par with all the other girls that I was riding with.”
It was an unusual position for the three-time Winter Olympics medallist and multiple-time X-Games champion.
At the end of 2023, the Wānaka star suffered a setback due to a fractured talus. It turned out to be more of an issue than anticipated, with Sadowski-Synnott recalling the recovery from the injury took much longer than originally expected.
“Just because of the nature of snowboarding and the sport, how much pressure goes into your ankle,” she says of the delayed recovery timeline.
“When we’re jumping off 60-foot jumps and hitting these rails, we’re putting so much pressure and impact through those joints and the ankle is really the thing that feels it all. Before my injury, I didn’t really have an appreciation of that or of the kind of level at which the sport had gotten to and how hard you had to work to come back.
“The injury, it was definitely a tough one mentally and physically, but it gave me so much perspective and gratitude to be here doing what I’m doing. I’m really lucky to have this opportunity.”
While it kept her grounded for much of 2024, Sadowski-Synnott’s return in 2025 was one of intent.
Returning to the X-Games early in the year, she opened up her campaign with bronze in the big air competition, before returning to the top step of the podium in slopestyle.
And if a fear of getting left behind in terms of progression had been on her mind, she quickly silenced those thoughts.
On her way to a sixth X-Games gold medal, Sadowski-Synnott landed a backside triple cork 1440 (three inverts and four full rotations) – making her the first athlete to land the trick in a women’s slopestyle competition.
She only continued on an upward trajectory from there as she ended the campaign with her third Slopestyle World Championship and her first career slopestyle crystal globe – awarded to the best performing athlete in each discipline across the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) World Cup season.
“This past year has been incredible and really exceeded my expectations coming off my ankle injury. I set my expectations quite low because, with the nature of my injury, I just really wasn’t sure how it was going to go,” Sadowski-Synnott says.
“It’s been a really good year and all the build-up to this next coming one, so I’m really excited.”
Still only 24 years old, Sadowski-Synnott is now turning her attention to her third Winter Olympics as she looks to add to her medal collection.
Sadowski-Synnott wrote her name into the history books with big air bronze in Pyeongchang in 2018 – becoming just New Zealand’s second medallist at a Winter Games after alpine skier Annelise Coberger’s effort for silver in 1992, and, at 16 years 353 days old, New Zealand’s youngest Olympic medallist. That record was, however, taken from her later the same day by freestyle skier Nico Porteous who was 262 days younger than Sadowski-Synnott.
She returned to the Olympic stage in Beijing in 2022, completing her medal collection with silver in the big air and gold in slopestyle.
While things have changed for Sadowski-Synnott between her first Olympics and this year’s edition in Italy, so too has the outlook for New Zealand’s Winter Games squad, with a host of legitimate medal contenders in the 17-strong team.
And after returning with X Games silver in both slopestyle and big air in his first competition of the season last month, the Olympics provide yet another chance to make her mark on the sport.
“Thinking of coming into my third Olympics kind of feels insane. I just think of, like, 12-year-old Zoi, just dreaming of going to one Olympics and somehow I blink and I’m going into my third. I’m really grateful to be here and grateful for the opportunity,” she says.
“Coming into these Olympics, I have the tricks that I want to do and, yeah, you can only really focus on yourself. I’ve got my goals and if I do them, I hope that I get what I want from it.
“But at the same time, like, you can’t control the outcome and I am so humbled and inspired by the girls that I compete against. It could be anyone’s ball game given the day.
“I’m just excited to show what I’ve been working on and my snowboarding to the world at the Olympics.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.