Zoi Sadowski-Synnott put New Zealand on the snowboard map. The Olympic champ is ‘all in’ for Milan
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — New Zealand snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won gold and silver medals at the 2022 Winter Games, riding a fighting spirit based on being an underdog from Down Under.
Now the three-time Olympic medalist is a favorite to defend her women’s slopestyle title next month at the Milan Cortina Games.
Sure, hailing from New Zealand meant day-long transoceanic flights to get to major competitions on the other side of the globe and extremely long stints away from home. It also made the 24-year-old relish the role of outsider.
“We come from a small country. It is not as wealthy as say the United States, and if you have a dream, you have to work hard for it. I think that’s kind of kind of in our blood,” Sadowski-Synnott told The Associated Press from her home on the South Island.
The softspoken rider put New Zealand on the map in a winter sport that was traditionally dominated by Northern Hemisphere powers like the U.S. and European countries. New Zealand and Japan have helped widen the snowboarding elite to include the Asian Rim. She has joined the list of famous New Zealand athletes like Scott Dixon, Lydia Ko and the many rugby stars for the All Blacks, though that list is nearly bereft of winter sports.
Sadowski-Synnott became the first New Zealander to win a gold at the Winter Games in 2022 when she triumphed in women’s slopestyle, where snowboarders demonstrate their skills on a course with obstacles and jumps. She followed with a silver in big air. She also won bronze in big air at the 2018 Games when she was 16.
Sadowski-Synnott is peaking ahead of the 2026 Games. She won her third world championship in slopestyle in 2025, when she also became the first Kiwi woman to win a Crystal Globe for slopestyle.
She won’t be alone. New Zealand’s government has increased financial support for winter sports during this Olympic cycle. Freestyle skier Nico Porteous, who won a gold of his own in Beijing, has retired. But freestyle skier Luca Harrington and Alpine skier Alice Robinson are also medal hopefuls.
“We don’t have the numbers that, say, America or European countries have but you can really feel how special it is when we do get that support because we’re like the underdogs,” she said. “When I’m overseas competing I do feel so much support from New Zealand and definitely it is ramping up to these Olympics.”
Two winters and a sliver of summer
New Zealand’s winter athletes rarely feel the warmth of summer.
Sadowski-Synnott said she leaves home in October for competitions in the Northern Hemisphere and won’t return until May or early June, just when winter is arriving in New Zealand. The only exception are the two weeks at home for Christmas, which is midsummer in New Zealand.
“It is funny talking to some of my competitors and friends on tour. They’ll talk about not having been home for four weeks and we’ve already been living out of a suitcase for three months,” she said. “It is hard coming from New Zealand in that sense. But I’ve been doing it for a really long time, so I’m used to it and, yeah, I love it.”
Being a Kiwi is sweet
Born in Australia to an American mother and a Kiwi father, Sadowski-Synnott moved to New Zealand at age 6 and grew up in Wanaka next to a ski resort where foreign athletes come to train when it is summer in the northern half of the globe.
She has the advantage of “being able to sleep in my own bed and be around friends and family while also training for such a long period of time where there’s no disruptions or competitions.” She also benefits from the tight community that is New Zealand, especially inside its snowboarding crew.
Sadowski-Synnot recalled her eureka moment when at age 12 she saw New Zealand women competing in the first slopestyle event at the 2014 Olympics. About that time she began riding with the country’s best at her local snowboard park.
“When I started really competing and my career started taking off, there were people that came before me that that kind of had paved that way, which was really special and really made it all possible,” she said.
No holding back
Sadowski-Synnott became the first woman to land back-to-back double corks in competitive slopestyle before the Beijing Olympics. After missing the entire 2023-2024 season with an ankle injury, she became the first woman to pull off a triple cork in slopestyle (think of corks as off-axis spinning jumps, providing a corkscrewing effect).
Bone bruising in her knee ruled Sadowski-Synnott out of two World Cup events in December but she said she is not worried about being fit before she heads to Italy. And she’s not sweating the challenges.
“There’s definitely a point in this season where those tricks that you were scared of three months ago, they now feel like nothing. It’s like automatic muscle memory,” she said. “Those risks in your mind have just completely gone, and all there is is confidence.”
In snowboarding, she said, you must push away concerns that you could pick up a bad injury while spinning through the air, even with the Olympics right around the corner.
“There is that aspect of, ‘Oh, should I wait to do this trick that is too risky because it might put me out for the next comp?’ But I think in snowboarding you can’t have that mindset,” she said. “You gotta do the tricks when you can and just be all in.”
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics