Wānaka is all anticipation with the prospect of history being created at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games which open today (Friday February 4).

New Zealand has never won a Winter Olympic Games gold medal and has only won three medals in our history of attending the Games. Two of those (both bronze) were won by Wānaka’s Zoi Zadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteus in Pyeongchang in 2018.

Zoi and Nico will be hoping to create history in Beijing with both athletes fancied to reach the podium in their respective events.

Zoi, who will compete in snowboard slopestyle and snowboard big air, goes into the Games in red hot form having landed on the podium in every competition she dropped into in the 2020/21 season.

Nico was crowned the Freeski Halfpipe World Champion in 2021 and is the first athlete to land a trick combination of back-to-back 1620s in competition in that discipline.

Of the 15 athletes in the New Zealand team at the Games, Wānaka can claim seven as our own.

Joining Nico in the freeski halfpipe competition will be his brother Miguel, and Wānaka locals Gustav Legnavsky (16), and Ben Harrington.

Miguel is no stranger to the podium having won medals at the freeski halfpipe World Cup and X Games. In January 2022 he finished fifth at the Mammoth Mountain Freeski Halfpipe World Cup.

Gustav finished eighth in the same event, a career best for him, while Ben has achieved two career best World Cup top 10 finishes and an invitation to X Games. 

Freeskier Finn Bilous will compete in freeski slopestyle and freeski big air at the Games. One of our more experienced athletes, Finn, along with Alice Robinson, will carry the New Zealand flag at the opening ceremony just as he did at the Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2016 where he won New Zealand’s first ever Winter Youth Olympic Games medals, with a silver in the halfpipe and bronze in slopestyle.

Out of the park, Hāwea locals will be barracking for homegrown cross country skier Campbell Wright who will compete in cross country skiing and biathlon.

Campbell is the youngest athlete in the IBU World Cup circuit where he is ranked fifty-fifth.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee has established a fanzone (NZHQ) at Apres by Cardrona here in Wānaka for the public to enjoy the Games.

NZHQ will open daily from February 5-20 from 2pm-late with New Zealand athletes in action every day except Thursday 10 and Wednesday 16.

The full schedule is available here.

The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games will run from 4-20 February 2022, featuring 2,800 athletes competing across 15 disciplines in 109 medal events.

PHOTO: Joshua R. Gateley/ESPN Images