Luca Harrington has finished third in the men's freestyle skiing slopestyle event overnight, claiming New Zealand's second medal at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy.
The 21-year-old said "today was a battle, and it was a battle for all of us", finishing behind runner up Alex Hall of the United States and new Olympic slopestyle skiing champion, Birk Ruud, of Norway.
The Wanaka native pulled out a clean final run after failing to land his first two.
"It was definitely not the smoothest day, didn't quite go to plan," he told Breakfast.
"I didn't have a ton of confidence going into that last run. But you know, managed to pick myself up, pick up the pieces. And yeah, I was super proud to just put that whole run together and then walk away with the bronze."
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott earlier claimed New Zealand's first medal of the games, taking silver in the Big Air event on Tuesday.
Gold medal winner Ruud smiled as he showed off his medal, and spread across the inside of his bottom lip, a still-fresh smear of blood.
That he gashed himself while falling off a rail and landing facedown during an otherwise-meaningless victory run seemed practically perfect for Tuesday, a day of spills and spinouts in which one of this sport's most important participants — the sun — never showed up.
"I was just trying to go beat myself up again," Ruud said.
An hour or so earlier, on his first run of the day, the 25-year-old from Norway was one of the few who found his bearings amid the grey skies that, as silver medallist Alex Hall of the United States said, "made me have to go by feel".
The 21-year-old pulled out a clutch final run after failing to land his first two. (Source: Breakfast)
Add the terrible sightlines to the fact that none of the 12 skiers on this chilly mountain were going for second place — or fifth — and what resulted was a day full of crashes, with a few moments of beauty mixed in. All the skiers had three chances to make it down the mountain. Of those 36 runs, only eight ended without a fall.
“There’s no visibility and you can’t see the landing, so it’s hard to differentiate the landing from the sky,” explained Hall's American teammate, Mac Forehand, who struggled on the rails and came in 11th. “That kind of causes complications when you’re flipping through the air doing doubles and triples.”
Give them credit for trying.
The conversation might start with the fifth-place finisher, Jesper Tjader of Sweden. While most skiers this week have been happy simply to slide on and off the first rail without a mishap, Tjader climbed aboard by skiing backward, then doing a backflip and slamming his skis on the piece of metal that can't be more than about six inches wide.
“I had no choice but to do it, for sure,” he said. “That's what this sport is all about. It's about showing your best skiing to the people. It's not always about the result.”
-Additional reporting by Associated Press
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