Beijing, China, February 15, 2022: Japan’s teenage snowboarder Kokomo Murase won a bronze medal in the women’s snowboard big air competition on Tuesday morning – and then insisted the competitors were friends rather than rivals.
Murase, 17, finished third behind Austria’s defending Olympic champion Anna Gasser and silver medal-winner Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of New Zealand at the Big Air Shougang venue on the outskirts of Beijing.
With two of the three runs counting towards the grand total, Gasser won gold with 185.50 from scores of 95.50 on her third run and 90.00 on her first run; Sadowski-Synnott took silver on 177.00 (93.25 first run/83.75 second run) and Murase nailed bronze with a final score of 171.50 from her first run of 80.00 and 91.50 on her second run.
Another Japanese, Reira Iwabuchi, was fourth on 166.00 and China’s Rong Ge was fifth with 160.00.
Murase said she was “elated” to walk away with a bronze medal.
“All the enormous amount of work that I put in before coming here was worth it,” she said.
The snowboarders hugged each other when the competition was over, prompting Murase to observe: “Even though snowboarding is an individual sport, we are not rivals. We are competing with each other together in a friendly way.”
Photos: FIS Snowboarding
