Porteous turns focus to Games
IT has been a hell of a week for Nico Porteous, and he is hoping it is just as good in a year’s time.
Porteous won an X Games gold medal at Aspen last weekend with a neverbeforeseen trick that he had been practising for most of last winter.
The Otago skier became the first New Zealander to win gold in Freeski SuperPipe at the X Games.
He became the first freeskier to ever land both his right double 1620 and the combination of a right double 1620 into a left double 1620 in a halfpipe competition.
But he is not resting on his laurels. There is no time for that.
Porteous is hoping to line up at the Winter Olympics next year in Beijing, which will start on February 4.
He had worked hard all last winter in New Zealand to perfect the trick and was now reaping the rewards.
‘‘I’m still on cloud nine. A lot of things went through my head when I did that run,’’ he said from Aspen yesterday.
‘‘A lot of relief, a lot of adrenaline, a lot of joy, just the most crazy mixture of the emotions. It was really hard to describe at that time. The best way to say, was I was on top of the world.
‘‘I just can’t believe all the hard work and determination to get through it.’’
Porteous won bronze in South Korea in 2018, aged just 16, but had made a change over the past year which he hopes will benefit him.
‘‘I had a mindset change earlier in the year that rather than being focused on results, being focused on being the best skier I can be. Just being focused on being a skier rather than focusing on where I am standing on the podium.
‘‘So for the next year I am just going to continue to have that mindset. Train as hard as I can and hopefully when the big show comes around it all pays off.’’ He said the new approach had come simply from him maturing as an athlete and as a person.
‘‘When I got bronze at the Olympics I was 16 and was just a young buck. So as you become older you mature from the changes and become a better athlete.’’
He said the hard work now had to be done. He had a couple of tricks up his sleeve but would wait until the Games to unveil them.
Porteous went to China two years to compete, and admitted it was different with its culture and the fact there was only 20cm of natural snow a year.
He was still in Aspen and would head back to New Zealand in May. From there it was just more training as his next competition was not until December.
And after that the Winter Olympics is just around the corner.