The New Zealand Winter Olympic team have honoured Nico Porteous with a haka after the 20-year-old skier won a gold medal in the halfpipe at the Beijing Games.
Members of the team watched the final from the bottom of the pipe and were ecstatic when Porteous claimed gold after a brilliant performance.
With temperatures pushing -25 degrees, the team broke out the haka on the snow as Porteous respectfully watched on. He was embraced in a hug afterwards.
Porteous became just the second gold medallist for New Zealand at the Winter Olympics, following Zoi Sadowski-Synnott's slopestyle victory just over a week ago.
Together the pair won three medals in Beijing - two gold and one silver. It is comfortably New Zealand's best ever performance at the Winter Olympics, eclipsing the two bronze medals won four years ago in PyeongChang, and the lone silver at Albertville in 1992.
The two golds put New Zealand 16th on the overall medal table in Beijing, two spots above Australia.
It is an impressive performance given the New Zealand team featured just 15 athletes. In contrast, Australia took 44 athletes, while Great Britain took 50 and had failed to medal in any event going into the final day.
Porteous and Sadowski-Synnott also now own five of the six Winter Olympic medals New Zealand has ever won and could yet still add more given both are just 20 years old.
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