Snowboarder Su Yiming delivers China's 1st gold of Winter Olympics while Japan grabs more medals

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LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — Su Yiming sat in the snow at the bottom of the snowboarding course, tears rolling down his cheeks. So close to winning China its first gold at the Milan Cortina Games, he still had a long wait to endure.

Luckily for Su, one by one his rivals either fell or came up short of his winning score.

Another Olympic medal for Su in the Italian Alps, another victory in an incredibly successful and still young career for the former child actor.

Su celebrated his 22nd birthday with a second career gold medal and fourth overall Wednesday. He was the winner of an error-prone men's slopestyle final, when he was the only one of the 12 finalists to complete his three runs through the course's big rails and tightly bunched jumps without any falls or major errors.

“There’s no better gift for myself for my 22nd birthday,” Su said. “I’m just really, truly proud of myself.”

In the women's slopestyle final, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott became the most decorated snowboarder in Olympic history with her fifth career medal after taking silver behind winner Mari Fukada of Japan.

For Su, the tension seemed almost too much after he failed to improve his best score of 82.41 points on his third run. Knowing that he had left the door open, he wiped his cheeks while watching seven opponents each take their final shot — and fail to better his mark.

“I just started realizing this is my last run of the Milan Olympics,” Su said. “Then I started to realize today was my birthday, my parents are here to supporting me and my coaches, everybody out here supporting me... The emotions just came and I just can’t help to stop crying.”

Moments later, those turned to tears of joy when he stepped onto the top spot on the podium.

Su burst onto the Olympic stage when he won gold in big air and silver in slopestyle at the Beijing 2022 Games. He then took two years off to recover from what he called fatigue. Then came recurrent ankle injuries that required him to compete with painkillers to get back into form for these Games.

Last week, he took bronze in big air in Livigno as a prelude to his slopestyle gold.

In Su’s words, “It’s all paid off.”

Sadowski-Synnott was off the podium when she dropped in for the final's last run and pulled off a big score to grab her record-setting silver.

The 24-year-old New Zealander also won silver in big air at these Games, adding to a big air bronze in 2018 and big air silver in 2022. Four years ago in Beijing she became the first Kiwi to win a gold medal at a Winter Games when she triumphed in women’s slopestyle.

On hearing of her milestone, she said, “It feels pretty insane, to be honest.”

Su and Austria's 40-year-old Ben Karl, an Alpine racer, are next in the all-time medal list for snowboarders after winning their fourth medal at these Games.

In the women’s slopestyle final, the 19-year-old Fukada proved unbeatable with a score of 87.83 while fellow Japanese rider Kokomo Murase took bronze.

That brought Japan’s massive medal haul at the Livigno snowboarding park to nine, including four golds. Murase added the bronze to her gold in big air.

“I still can’t believe it,” Fukada said after her victorious Olympic debut.

Austria’s two-time big air gold medalist Anna Gasser finished her Olympic career with a 10th-place finish in the slopestyle final.

“It’s probably going to hit me when the next Olympics come around,” the 34-year-old Gasser said.

Taiga Hasegawa was second in the men’s final. American rider Jake Canter, 22, claimed the bronze in his first Games.

Mark McMorris of Canada, a three-time bronze medalist, finished eighth two weeks after being concussed in training.

McMorris' day got off to a bad start when he crashed in practice.

“Broke a board, completely cranked my neck,” he said. “It’s been an absolute war.”

And it didn't get much better for the four-time Olympian, who had a hard fall on his last run of the final.

“Super proud to be in there, disappointed with the way my runs came together today,” the 32-year-old McMorris said. “I’ve had pretty much 90% of my career go my way in all the big events, this event not being one of them, and it’s tough because I work super hard.”

The Livigno slopestyle course consists of three rail elements and three jumps. Judges score riders on their creativity and execution of tricks and their routine as a whole. Riders got three chances to perform their routines with only their best score counting.

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics