LIVIGNO: Josie Baff was in tears as she cradled her gold medal after holding her nerve to win a thrilling snowboard cross final by 0.04 seconds at the end of a wild day of competition in which she survived a photo finish before showing her class with phenomenal passes in the semi-final and final.

Baff won Australia’s second Milano Cortina 2026 gold medal in 24 hours, equalling the team’s best ever gold medal hauls at Salt Lake City 2002 and Vancouver 2010, with several top gold medal chances still to come.

The 23-year-old from Jindabyne, NSW was caught off guard by how emotional she became, both after making the final and after winning gold, culminating with her tears on the podium.

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“I think even going into the big final I had an emotional release and I was like, ‘wow, who was that’, it’s not something that I normally do,” she told Australian media, including Wide World of Sports, after the medal presentation.

“I guess it’s like a lot of build up and it’s all of the four years of hard work and I guess that kind of all comes out and when it works it’s pretty great.”

Baff arrived at Milano Cortina with the No.2 world ranking and high hopes but her competition started poorly with a mistake in the seeding run that shuffled her back to 17th. She revealed after her sensational victory that she’d battled flu this week, so when her seeding run went poorly she faced a tall order to get to the final, with some of the world’s genuine heavyweights drawn against her right from the very first race of the day.

“When I fell in the seeding I was definitely disappointed,” Baff said.

“I knew I was fast on this track. I was fast throughout all the training days we had here and it was definitely a little bit annoying because I wanted to win the time trial. But to win the gold medal is even better.”

In her first race of the day, Baff faced Sochi 2014 Winter Games champion Eva Adamczyková, the 2023 world champion and got the better of her in a confidence booster that carried her for the rest of the day. She scraped through her quarter-final in a photo finish, eliminating Swiss star Sina Siegenthaler and British 2021 World Championships silver medallist Charlotte Bankes.

From that point in the event the Aussie went from strength-to-strength, passing the eventual silver medallist, Czechia’s Adamczyková, with slick turns in both races and hanging on to the front position in tight finishes after the final jump.

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“In the quarter-final I was behind Eva (Adamczyková) and I was coming in with a lot of speed there, so I thought I could ride Eva’s tail to the bottom and have a free lift with her, knowing that she was fast,” she said. “So I speed checked and after the race I was kind of disappointed with myself because I knew there was space.

“I went back up to the top and I told my coach, if I’m in that position again I’m going, knowing I can ride that turn middle, inside, high line, no matter where I am, I know I can really rail this turn and it was the same with the following one.

“That’s what gave me the confidence to do it, after I did it in semis I knew I could do it in finals.”

Baff revealed seeking support from a sports psychologist at the urging of her boyfriend, Canadian Olympian Eliot Grondin, who won the silver medal in the men’s snowboard cross on Friday, had played a role in her steely-willed determination to recover from setbacks before emerging with a gold medal.

Gold medalist Australia’s Josie Baff kisses her medal after winning the women’s snowboard cross finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson) AP

“I get into that head space and I activate a different part of me, I guess the competitor in me comes out,” she said.

“(Eliot) highlighted a few issues or weaknesses that I had and he was able to tell me, ‘you should get a sports psychologist’, not because I necessarily needed it but because of how much it had helped him and it helped me as well,” Baff added.

“To go into that path was super helpful. And having (Eliot) and having his belief is pretty great because he’s the best in the world. So him winning a silver medal yesterday, I was like, ‘well, I hope I can do something like that too’, so yeah, it’s very special.”

Baff added that she sought specific advice from Grondin on how to tackle the course, gaining the advantage of having his competition 24 hours before hers.

She admitted that had given her an edge.

“I do ask advice and we were doing video with my coaches and I was asking him how he felt yesterday and he was telling me that the turnaround was pretty quick at the top, especially if you’re in the bottom bracket. Luckily I was in the top bracket, so I had a bit of time between my heats but then we were able to be prepared for that, so he definitely was able to offer some insight that was super helpful for today.”

Grondin was one of 35 members of Baff’s cheer squad watching from the crowd as she picked her way through the field round-by-round before snowboarding to glory in the final.

Each of the 35 members of her entourage, which included her parents, siblings, aunties, uncles and cousins as well as some of her friends, were wearing pink beanies in tribute to her nickname ‘Pinky’ which has stuck with her ever since she was a kid and wore a pink helmet to ski.

She said she could hear them cheering at the bottom of each of her runs but was also spurred on by other members of the Australian team: Cooper Woods, who won moguls gold the day before, and Cam Bolton, the senior member of the snowboard cross team who is still recovering in Milan after a shocking training crash in Livigno fractured his neck in two places.

“We’re one big family and to not have Cam here was pretty heartbreaking,” Baff said.

“He was texting me last night and saying ‘you can win this race Josie’, and I was like, ‘I know I can’. So to be able to do that is pretty cool and I know he’s watching and I wish him all the best as well.

“The team is definitely a family, the coaches are like second dads, we have a lot of banter and fights, which is quite funny, we’re with each other all the time but all the time we’re living in each other’s skin, so it’s inevitable, but we’re all one big happy family.”

Both Australia’s gold medallists at Milano Cortina spent years of their childhood in Jindabyne, with Baff admitting she had been inspired by Woods, who she had grown up doing surf lifesaving with.

“I saw him a lot down in Pambula and I know him and his family super well, so seeing him do that yesterday definitely sparked a little fire in me. I thought if he could do it I could do it too,” she said.

“I’ll have to go and show him that I did it too.”

Australia had two other competitors in the women’s snowboard cross, with Mia Clift “heartbroken” by her quarter-final elimination, while 19-year-old Abbey Wilson was unable to get out of her heat after finishing third.