The last of the Kiwi women bowed out of the Winter Olympics early, but give some hope for a bright snow sport future. And there's still time to add to the NZ medal tally.
While Chinese freeski wunderkind Eileen Gu was craving a Kiwi meat pie - which she ate every day for two months in New Zealand - her rival Kiwi Anja Barugh was dreaming of Italian parmesan cheese in four year's time.
Gu and Barugh found themselves at opposite ends of the halfpipe qualifiers at the Beijing Winter Olympics yesterday.
Eighteen-year-old Gu, born and raised in the US but the posterchild for China at these Olympics, flew effortlessly into first place and the favourite spot to win a third medal (probably gold). But Barugh and New Zealand team-mate Chloe McMillan missed the qualifying mark as they both struggled to fly. The two Waikato skiers were the last of the Kiwi female athletes to compete in Beijing.
Gu already has gold from the freestyle skiing big air and silver from the slopestyle - and was the only competitor to score in the 90s, with a 93.75 and a 95.50.
Having spent recent Kiwi winters skiing in Cardrona, training with Kiwi coach Brad Prosser, Gu has one distinct memory from her time in Aotearoa.
“Oh gosh, meat pies!” she told Sky Sport when asked what she remembers most from New Zealand. “I had a meat pie every day for lunch for like two months." It even prompted her to make her own back at home.
Gu also paid credit to Prosser for introducing her to the halfpipe event.
“We always say that Brad is probably responsible for making me the haflpipe skier that I am today, I actually wasn’t a pipe skier until like two seasons ago when I started working with Brad," she said.
“It just clicked like that. We’re still on super good terms, we reach out all the time, and I’ll text him after this."
While Barugh, also making her Olympic debut, didn’t fare as well in qualifying, she also had food on the brain.
“I’m severely lactose intolerant and the next Olympics are in Italy, so my goal is to do well enough that I can eat a block of parmesan cheese at the end," the 22-year-old laughed.
Both Barugh and McMillan hail from the Waikato, and were in Beijing for less than a week before competing, spending their build-up in Switzerland.
Barugh was the first to drop in and lost momentum as her run went on, unable to pull off some of her tricks without the air to do so. Her first score, 38.50, put her in 18th, and she suffered the same problems in her second run, crashing on her final landing, and ending up 19th.
McMillan had a similar problem - as soon as either of the Kiwi athletes started to turn, they couldn’t clear the deck of the halfpipe and gain the height they needed. Just 21, McMillan scored 41.75, to be 17th place, and slightly improved second time around, but finished 19th - well outside the top 12 who went through to the final.
“I kind of bobbled on my first run, which led me to improvising the whole rest of my run from that,” says McMillan.
“[It] was a bit nerve-wracking coming into the second run but I just knew I had to clean it up and put down the best I could. I just wanted to show the best skiing that I could do.”
Barugh is confident she's on track to eat cheese at the 2026 Winter Games, but still remembers where she came from.
“When I hopped on skis at six because our friends from surf club wanted us to do something with them in the winter, let’s just say I didn’t think I was going to be here,” she laughs. “I was more of a summer baby growing up at the beach, so now to be here is pretty special.”
McMillan has a similar story, starting on plastic skis at five years old and crediting her parents, Ross and Sally, for getting her to Beijing.
“My parents, wow, they used to drive every weekend down to Ruapehu from Hamilton to take us skiing and they just really, really wanted us to love it,” she says, explaining that they never forced her to compete.
“I never got more excited than Friday afternoons, packing the car, going to the hill and then Sunday night, coming home and pretending to be asleep so my parents could carry me back to bed.”
Despite not making the finals, both Kiwis seemed upbeat, Barugh encouraging young Kiwi girls to follow their dreams.
“To all the little girls out there that think they want to do something like this: You girls can make it, you know if you dream big, you can do it."
It was a mixed bag for the Kiwi men competing in the freeski halfpipe, with brothers Nico and Miguel Porteous going through to tomorrow's final in second and ninth spots respectively, and Gustav Legnavsky and Ben Harrington missing out.
Harrington finished one spot outside of the top 12 final, after heavily crashing in his second run.
Miguel Porteous described it as “one of the gnarliest crashes I’ve ever seen in the pipe." The other Kiwi skiers ran onto the course alongside paramedics to check on him as he lay motionless in the snow, before Harrington managed to walk off the course but seemed shaken, after hitting his head hard against the top of the pipe.
Images of the day
How the Kiwi women fared
The halfpipe freeskiers wrapped up the NZ women's schedule at these Olympics yesterday. And Zoi Sadowski-Synnott’s historic gold and silver medals - teaching us the beauty of a perfectly executed frontside double cork 1080 with a melon grab - overshadowed the disappointment of the rest of the team.
Alpine skier Alice Robinson came to Beijing as a real medal prospect, particularly in the giant slalom. But she struggled to put down a run she’d be proud of in the giant slalom, ending up 22nd. In her typical aggressive style, she gave it her all in the Super G - “to either be on the podium or in the fence” – but lost control soon into her run and crashed down the slope.
Although a little battered and bruised, Robinson decided to have a crack at downhill, an event she had very little experience in, and finished the course to end up 25th.
Robinson’s second Olympics were not what she’d hoped for, but she’s still just 20 and the women who won her events were in their late 20s and early 30s. She has a long international career ahead of her and plenty of experience to learn from before Milan 2026.
An injury suffered in training put Margaux Hackett on the backfoot in Beijing. Uncertain if she would compete in the freeski big air, she fell on her first two attempts but landed a decent third jump to finish 22nd.
She came closer to making the top-12 finals in the freeski slopestyle, ending up 16th. In her Olympic debut, her goal was to make the finals and show off more of her skiing, but that early injury rattled her.
Injury also put a premature end to Cool Wakashima’s first Olympics – the snowboarder hurting her tailbone in a crash in her opening run of the slopestyle, and ruled her out of that and the big air.
Who’s still to ski
Miguel and Nico Porteous have their halfpipe final on Saturday at 2.30pm, Nico looking to add to his bronze from 2018.
Peter Michael will be New Zealand’s last athlete to go for gold in Beijing when he takes the ice for the mass start speed skating event on Saturday at 8pm. The top eight athletes from each race make it to the final at 9.30 that evening.
