Team New Zealand at Milano/Cortina '26

[Alexjc]

Our small team is already underway up on the slopes.

Expecting at least 3 medals of any colour, definitely a Gold in there somewhere.

Feels like it's a "quiet" campaign, due to the reversed time zone and season. 

We'll see what happens.

[Alexjc]

On the medal table three days in...

Silver in the women's Big Air - Zoi Sadowski-Synnott 

Still more to come from her later in the week.

[Rob2012]

And she got a haka from the rest of the team to celebrate 

[Alexjc]

32 minutes ago, Rob2012 said:

And she got a haka from the rest of the team to celebrate 

And that's pretty much the whole team right there 

Just not a thing we follow, NZ lacks the year-round training facilities for Winter sports... Still good news though.

[Durban Sandshark]

17 hours ago, Alexjc said:

And that's pretty much the whole team right there 

Just not a thing we follow, NZ lacks the year-round training facilities for Winter sports... Still good news though.

Maybe NZ should develop its own Icehouse like across the Tazman Sea in Melbourne to further develop, grow, and deepen its winter sports scene. Have it where there's an abundance of snow and ice like somewhere on the South Island and another up in Auckland for the indoor sports. Or near Whakapapa on the North Island close to Auckland. Should be time for it to made a reality now and invest in. NZ is a major Southern Hemisphere skiing destination, and I'm quoting the following from Wikipedia's skiing in New Zealand entry "due to its high latitude, mountainous terrain, and well-developed economy and tourism industry. The ski season in New Zealand starts in mid June and in good winters can run through to the start of November."

17 hours ago, Rob2012 said:

And she got a haka from the rest of the team to celebrate 

Also worth noting she and Ben Barclay wore--I forgot what it's called--while co-carrying the NZ flag during the Opening Ceremony marching with the traditional black gear. But in any case NZ now has a solid Winter Olympics pedigree with recent ones like Australia, well long ahead from the days of skiier Annelise Coberger--and both remain the only Southern Hemisphere nations to have won Winter Olympic medals. Gold even like Sadowski-Synnott.

[Alexjc]

 Another medal!

Bronze!  

Luca Harrington, Freestyle Skiing - Slopestyle. 

Great effort among Freestyle powerhouse nations.

 

[Alexjc]

Gone quiet in the medal chances for now.

The snowboard half-pipe all but destroying our athletes with simple split-second errors.

Honestly, it gives me the willies when they slip-up like that.

[Sir Rols]

5 minutes ago, Alexjc said:

Gone quiet in the medal chances for now.

The snowboard half-pipe all but destroying our athletes with simple split-second errors.

Honestly, it gives me the willies when they slip-up like that.

Tell me about it - and then there’s always some young punk from Osaka or Nagoya ready to swoop in and steal the medals

[Vill]

Zoi picks up another Silver medal in Livigno. This time in slopestyle by the narrowest of margins with 0.35 being the difference to Japanese Fukada Mari's gold winning run of 87.83.

She becomes the most decorated snowboarder with five Olympic medals, and tied second most decorated amongst New Zealand athletes - tied with Ian Ferguson, Paul McDonald and Mark Todd.

We also tie our highest medal total from Beijing as a result.

We've got two more medal opportunities in the freeski halfpipe in both the men's and women's freeski halfpipe. Mischa Thomas will be looking to qualify to the women's finals with qualifications tomorrow. Whilst four of our freeskiers - including the current halfpipe world champion, Finley Melville-Ives, will hope to make it through to the men's finals.

[Alexjc]

6 hours ago, Vill said:

Zoi picks up another Silver medal in Livigno. This time in slopestyle by the narrowest of margins with 0.35 being the difference to Japanese Fukada Mari's gold winning run of 87.83.

She becomes the most decorated snowboarder with five Olympic medals, and tied second most decorated amongst New Zealand athletes - tied with Ian Ferguson, Paul McDonald and Mark Todd.

We also tie our highest medal total from Beijing as a result.

We've got two more medal opportunities in the freeski halfpipe in both the men's and women's freeski halfpipe. Mischa Thomas will be looking to qualify to the women's finals with qualifications tomorrow. Whilst four of our freeskiers - including the current halfpipe world champion, Finley Melville-Ives, will hope to make it through to the men's finals.

 Those Japanese are hard to get past...Really dominating the Snowboards.

New Zealand has had a good Olympic cycle on the snowboards, let hope we can still build on it...allowing the kids to take risks and not constantly wrapping them in cotton wool all the time. As much as it is scary to watch.

Still two more chances for Gold to complete the set.

[Alexjc]

New Zealand's winter Olympics are pretty much over...

Not our best Games and Fin Melville Ives knocking himself out and breaking his collar bone during the Men's Freeski Halfpipe final sums up just how extreme our athletes have become to win any medal...

Still one more outside chance of some tin with the delayed Women's Freestyle Skiing Halfpipe set to go 10.40pm NZ Time.

[StefanMUC]

I‘m old enough to remember the sensation when „exotic“ (from our northern hemisphere perspective) Anneliese Coberger won that medal in Albertville.

How times (expectations) have changed.

[Vill]

2 hours ago, Alexjc said:

New Zealand's winter Olympics are pretty much over...

Not our best Games and Fin Melville Ives knocking himself out and breaking his collar bone during the Men's Freeski Halfpipe final sums up just how extreme our athletes have become to win any medal...

Still one more outside chance of some tin with the delayed Women's Freestyle Skiing Halfpipe set to go 10.40pm NZ Time.

Bit of a disappointing campaign considering the amount of medal prospects we had but sometimes that's how it is.

Most of our winter athletes are still young and developing though and will be in for a good shout for a medal in four years time. So there is something to look forward to at the next games at least. Hopefully the government and Snow Sports NZ can invest more into our athletes and infrastructure for them to remain competitive internationally.

Mischa will try and round out our campaign in style tonight.

[TorchbearerSydney]

Winter sports are so fluky- especially the events NZ and AUS specialize in....AUS won one gold on a countback and another by 0.02 second! No shame in not quite getting to the top podium.

[Alexjc]

 Well, A good solid B on the report card. 

New Zealand's Winter Olympics campaign which started out with so much hope, has ended in a whimper. Our 12-year cycle has peaked.

There were high expectations for Gold somewhere on the massive Halfpipe. But we had to settle for 2 x Silver and 1 x Bronze. And yes, our athletes are great but getting old for the Halfpipe. () 

A daring-do corner of the Olympics that kiwis seem to do well in during the build-up events before the games, we need to get the young kids out there pushing the limits and scaring the bejasus out of their parents.

Elsewhere you can see, by the size of the team, we do not really have the talent depth in Winter sports. We need to push for more programs, especially on the skis, and curling. (But not cheat at it - like Canada).

Four years' time we'll be back in the French alpine region, so the work needs to start now.

 

 

[Durban Sandshark]

On 2/22/2026 at 3:15 PM, Alexjc said:

 Well, A good solid B on the report card. 

New Zealand's Winter Olympics campaign which started out with so much hope, has ended in a whimper. Our 12-year cycle has peaked.

There were high expectations for Gold somewhere on the massive Halfpipe. But we had to settle for 2 x Silver and 1 x Bronze. And yes, our athletes are great but getting old for the Halfpipe. () 

A daring-do corner of the Olympics that kiwis seem to do well in during the build-up events before the games, we need to get the young kids out there pushing the limits and scaring the bejasus out of their parents.

Elsewhere you can see, by the size of the team, we do not really have the talent depth in Winter sports. We need to push for more programs, especially on the skis, and curling. (But not cheat at it - like Canada).

Four years' time we'll be back in the French alpine region, so the work needs to start now.

 

 

Too bad we didn't get to hear God Defend New Zealand again this time at the podium. Must need to diversify in Winter Olympic sports beyond the "daring-do" and "fluky" sports like snowboarding and freestyle skiing. How come we don't get Kiwi figure skaters in the Olympics much? Australia now gets them in. Enjoyed NZ curling at the Winter Olympics some years ago but hasn't qualified since. May need to return to that stage. We can certainly for now forget ice hockey; the NZ Ice Blacks are far from elite-level depth and competition. Still need much to develop. This is where my suggestion of NZ having its own Icehouse earlier might help things a bit to further build that depth and youth. Obviously much different from Annaliese Coberger's era now with New Zealand's Winter Olympic history. At least there's a more consistent and stronger Winter Olympics pedigree now than in the intermediate years between her and the NZ medal boom starting in Pyeongchang with Sadowski-Synnott and Porteous.

[Alexjc]

22 minutes ago, Durban Sandshark said:

Too bad we didn't get to hear God Defend New Zealand again this time at the podium. Must need to diversify in Winter Olympic sports beyond the "daring-do" and "fluky" sports like snowboarding and freestyle skiing. How come we don't get Kiwi figure skaters in the Olympics much? Australia now gets them in. Enjoyed NZ curling at the Winter Olympics some years ago but hasn't qualified since. May need to return to that stage. We can certainly for now forget ice hockey; the NZ Ice Blacks are far from elite-level depth and competition. Still need much to develop. This is where my suggestion of NZ having its own Icehouse earlier might help things a bit to further build that depth and youth. Obviously much different from Annaliese Coberger's era now with New Zealand's Winter Olympic history. At least there's a more consistent and stronger Winter Olympics pedigree now than in the intermediate years between her and the NZ medal boom starting in Pyeongchang with Sadowski-Synnott and Porteous.

The tragedy here is Christchurch was going to build a full-sized indoor ice racing track and curling facility out at QEII Park. Planning was well in hand when the earthquakes struck. There were plans to host the Olympics in 2018 as part of a regional event with Hutt/Queenstown/Wanaka.

Another reason is the lack of funding our winter athletes get. they are pretty much on their own. Government gives very little.

[yoshi]

I can't see the IOC going for a Winter Olympics in July, even if Saudi gets a stranglehold on the World Cup. That said, I think the Youth Olympics might be able to be a bit looser, it is supposed to function as an Olympic laboratory. Maybe that'd suit the South Island? Feels like a case of "if you don't ask, you'll never know" - if the IOC can make the schedule work, I imagine they'd welcome the concept with open arms, NZ is ideal for a Winter Youth Olympics

[Vill]

14 minutes ago, yoshi said:

I can't see the IOC going for a Winter Olympics in July, even if Saudi gets a stranglehold on the World Cup. That said, I think the Youth Olympics might be able to be a bit looser, it is supposed to function as an Olympic laboratory. Maybe that'd suit the South Island? Feels like a case of "if you don't ask, you'll never know" - if the IOC can make the schedule work, I imagine they'd welcome the concept with open arms, NZ is ideal for a Winter Youth Olympics

Hypothetically, a South Island Olympics/Youth Olympics isn't too far fetched of an idea aside from Ski Jumping or any or Luge/Skeleton/Bobsled where you'd possibly have to have them in Japan or elsewhere. It wouldn't make too much sense in building them in the SI without a strong legacy plan for those types of venues. But in terms of the other ice sports, it could easily be done in Christchurch and/or Dunedin if you repurposed the existing stadiums which Nice is doing for Ice Hockey and both have arenas that could host short track or curling etc. 

That being said, our main issues revolves around snow reliability. Our peak season's between July-August where you would have good consistency of snow but outside of that it's quite unreliable to where ski fields can close early. It's possible to mitigate that with snow guns - but that's where it can make it more expensive to host. Aside from that, Queenstown-Lakes district is slowly going through a transformation with public transport and infrastructure. Christchurch is exponentially booming with the new sporting venues. It's not out of the realm within the next 20-30 years we could bid for a WOG or WYOG in the SI with the right planning and concept. For now, we need to get more FIS or other winter championships in the SI to build a case for ourselves.

[Bear]

3 hours ago, yoshi said:

That said, I think the Youth Olympics might be able to be a bit looser, it is supposed to function as an Olympic laboratory. Maybe that'd suit the South Island? Feels like a case of "if you don't ask, you'll never know" - if the IOC can make the schedule work, I imagine they'd welcome the concept with open arms, NZ is ideal for a Winter Youth Olympics

They'd have to change it to an odd-number year, as a Winter YOGs in the southern hemisphere would conflict with the adult Olympic Games

[yoshi]

Ah, that's a problem. It would've been perfect for 2032 if it was in Melbourne