By Ben Stanley*
Analysis - For Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous, a lot changed on the side of a hill in South Korea last Thursday afternoon.
Carlos Garcia Knight has showed his potential at the Winter Olympics. Photo: Photosport
When it comes to winning your country's first Winter Olympics medals in 26 years, over the space of two hours, that's obviously a given.
Today, we'll get media scrums around the bronze medal-winning 16-year-olds as they arrive at Auckland Airport. There'll be the big sit-down TV interviews later this week, while you know the first wave of big endorsements for both is already starting to build.
Yet as fantastically life-changing as their lofty achievements in Pyeongchang were for them, Sadowski-Synnott and Porteous' two medals signify much more for winter sports in New Zealand, and Kiwis' attitudes towards them.
For the majority of years since Annelise Coberger's silver in Albertville, New Zealand's Winter Olympics team has been a bit of punch line for its ability to underwhelm.
High tide was reached on that relative consensus in Sochi four years ago, when the Kiwi team was mocked for what some perceived as a lackadaisical approach to competing.
I recall one prominent sports columnist even describing them as "a bunch of Kiwis on an expensive skiing holiday" who "bombed spectacularly."
Outside the fact that the experience in Sochi, especially from team leading Wells boys of Wanaka, was a huge platform for the 2018 group to build on, the Kiwi athletes in Pyeongchang didn't act much differently this time around.
The chill ski-bunny lingo was all the same - everyone was still "stoked" or "buzzing" - but the reaction hasn't been the same back home. A couple of medals around a couple of necks puts a thumb on scales, but it has been noticeable how little sniping there has been at this year's athletes.
Has the Kiwi sporting public grown up - or is it merely ambivalent? With the Super Rugby season not yet underway, only a few Black Caps games were providing the Winter Olympians with serious eyes-on-TV-screens competition.
Four years on from Sochi, perhaps it shows that we've dropped more of that grizzled stoicness when it comes to sport. Maybe we're beginning to understand that being grumpy isn't always the best indicator of the effort put in. Maybe you can smile, even if you don't succeed.
That attitude change corresponds too with a nation with radically way more options for sport, either to participate in or watch, than when Coberger won her silver in 1992. No longer is it just rugby, league, cricket and netball.
I mean, look at where the medals came from; Sadowski-Synnott's was in a sub-sport - snowboard big air - in its first Olympics, while Porteous's came in the free ski half-pipe - its second Olympic appearance.
The next Summer Olympics in Tokyo will see skateboarding included, and there'll surely be a Kiwi competing.
Winter Olympic bronze medallists Sadowski-Synnott and Nico Porteous. Photo: AFP
Perhaps the most exciting thing we learnt from last week is we won't be waiting as long for our next Winter Olympics medal.
In addition to Sadowski-Synnott and Porteous, promising slalom skier Alice Robinson is also 16. Snowboard slope style finalist Carlos Garcia Knight's 20, free ski slopestyler Finn Bilous is 18 and Jackson Wells, 19.
The support network around these athletes seems strong, too. A lot has been made of the 26 years that have passed since a Kiwi athlete last stood atop a Winter Olympics podium, but the fact was, and remains; Coberger was an outlier in her success.
A superbly talented 20-year-old, Coberger did a lot of the heavy lifting, training and travel on her own.
Success in Pyeongchang virtually guarantees increased taxpayer support for the Kiwi team at the next Winter Olympics, in Beijing in 2022. That's going to be a real value-for-money commitment too, when you look at the ages of the athletes likely to be there.
Consider too that the New Zealand team was missing two of its best medal hopefuls in South Korea. Injury ruled out free ski maestro Jossi Wells, while snowboarder Christy Prior was sidelined as she struggled to recover from an injury.
The world certainly turned for two pretty rad Kiwi teens in South Korea last week, but it also has, in many ways for the rest of us too.
* Ben Stanley is an award-winning journalist from Taupō, who covered the Sochi Winter Olympics for Fairfax.
