Wildcat ride ends in triumph
A double wildcat sounds like something out of Hairy Maclary’s worst nightmares, but snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott has written it into New Zealand’s Olympic record books.
The 16-year-old from Wanaka was surprised to win a bronze medal in the inaugural Winter Olympic big air finals, saying she was just happy to have ‘‘made it out alive’’ after throwing down the run of her life. In two amazing runs, she laid down her signature double wildcat, which is a double back flip on a cartwheel axis and then followed it up with a Switchback 900 leaving her spinning into the big air galaxy and landing as a medal winner.
Her two best scores combined from her three jumps came to 157.50, and third place. Austria’s Anna Gasser won gold with 185.00 and American Jamie Anderson took silver with 177.25.
Sadowski-Synnott said she didn’t expect either move would grab the attention of the judges the way it did.
‘‘Not at all. It was crazy because in my opinion my stronger discipline is the slopestyle. After having a disappointing performance with that, I was just real geared up in the big air [qualifications] and once I made it to the finals my coach started saying just do as well as I could.’’
Sadowski-Synnott was openly devastated when she didn’t land her jump in the slopestyle and there would have been Kiwis assuming it would be another four years until New Zealand ‘‘attends’’ but doesn’t ‘‘compete’’ at a Winter Olympics.
The Mount Aspiring student changed all that with two fabulous runs and what she calls ‘‘a Hail Mary’’ third run, which she failed to land. ‘‘We [she and coach Mitch Brown] weren’t too concerned about the outcome. It was just get out there and do the best that I can.’’