Timezone-wise, the action typically kicks off around 9pm NZT and wraps up around 11am, meaning we can chill out to a bit of curling before bed then wake up with some white-knuckle luge over breakfast, etc.<\/p>\n
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott at the 2022 Beijing Olympics (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Who are New Zealand\u2019s big medal hopes?<\/p>\n
There are 17 athletes<\/a> representing the silver fern in Italy, of whom 16 are concentrated in snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. The most recognisable name is snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, who won New Zealand\u2019s first ever Winter Olympics gold medal in slopestyle at Beijing 2022, along with a silver in big air. She placed second in both those events at the X Games in Aspen earlier this year.<\/p>\n New Zealand\u2019s other gold medallist at Beijing, freestyle skier Nico Porteous, stepped back from competitive skiing in 2025, but don\u2019t worry \u2013 W\u0101naka\u2019s Fin Melville Ives will be there to defend his crown, fresh from winning gold in the X Games superpipe (the same medal Porteous won in 2021 and 2022). Fellow W\u0101naka freestyle skier Luca Harrington, meanwhile, took home gold in slopestyle and silver in big air for the second X Games in a row. (Both of these guys have brothers who are also competing \u2013 Fin\u2019s twin Cam in the snowboard halfpipe, and Luca\u2019s brother Ben in the freeski halfpipe.)<\/p>\n The only non-snowboarder or freestyle skier in the New Zealand team, alpine skier Alice Robinson is competing at her third Winter Olympics. She finished well outside the medal places in 2018 (when she was just 16) and 2022, but is coming into this year\u2019s event off the back of a silver in the women\u2019s giant slalom at the 2025 Alpine Skiing World Cup. If she makes the podium here she\u2019ll be following in the footsteps of New Zealand\u2019s first Winter Olympics medallist Annelise Coberger, who won silver in the slalom in 1992.<\/p>\n When are they competing?<\/p>\n The schedule for New Zealand athletes is here<\/a>, and the full schedule is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n What are they wearing?<\/p>\n This is the first Olympics since Kathmandu took over from the sometimes maligned<\/a> Peak as team New Zealand\u2019s apparel partner. They haven\u2019t exactly reinvented the wheel with this year\u2019s uniform<\/a>, but it looks comfortable, warm and, most importantly, black.<\/p>\n Can we upload messages of support for the team to an online portal that they can access by scanning a QR code on the inside of their jacket?<\/p>\n Believe it or not, yes<\/a>.<\/p>\n What other sports are worth watching?<\/p>\n The Winter Olympics may not have as many events as its summer counterpart, but your odds of finding something fun, exciting or novel to watch at any given time are significantly better.\u00a0<\/p>\n Curling is probably the ultimate once-every-four-years sport \u2013 easy to pick up, with a pleasing rhythm and satisfying aesthetic.<\/p>\n Any sport in which athletes have to travel down a slope as fast as possible is an exciting watch \u2013 skeleton, luge, alpine skiing and bobsleigh (yes, Jamaica has a bobsleigh team, and word on the street is they might actually be pretty good this year). And for pure spectacle it\u2019s hard to look past the vastly different disciplines of figure skating and ski jumping<\/a>.<\/p>\n Novelty seekers should also keep an eye out for ski mountaineering, which is making its Olympic debut. It involves going uphill then downhill as fast as possible, and sounds like it could be the winter equivalent of the Summer Olympics\u2019 best new sport, speed climbing.<\/p>\n Who are the mascots?<\/p>\n \u201cCheerful stoats\u201d Tina and Milo are the official mascots of Milano Cortina 2026. According to the Olympics website Tina is \u201cpassionate about art and music\u201d and enjoys drinking espresso, while her younger brother Milo, the Paralympic mascot, was born with one paw missing and enjoys DJing.<\/p>\n What will New Zealand\u2019s exact medal tally be?<\/p>\n One gold, two silvers, one bronze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it\u2019s on, how to watch, our medal hopefuls, and one prediction. What\u2019s all this then? Milano Cortina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,213,28267],"class_list":{"0":"post-272583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-winter-olympics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fin Melville Ives (Photo: New Zealand Olympic Team)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n