Su Yiming celebrated his birthday by making history as China’s first Olympic gold medalist in the men’s snowboarding slopestyle event.
The 22-year-old held off Taiga Hasegawa from Japan in the final by a margin of .28 points to take home the gold. Jake Canter from the United States captured the bronze.
Men’s Snowboard Slopestyle Final Results
Full results via Olympics.com
Yiming, Hasegawa and Canter also finished in that order in qualifying, but they were far down the list of the top 12 contenders who made it through. They finished eighth, ninth and 10th, respectively.
Dane Menzies from New Zealand had an outstanding qualifying run with a score of 86.06 that would have been good enough to win in the final, but he was unable to repeat that dominant performance.
Menzies’ score dropped by 10 points in the final, opening the door for someone to take the top spot.
Yiming answered the call on his first run in the final. He nearly matched his top score in the third run with an 82.18 score, which still would have been good enough to win if that was his top mark.
The win for Yiming not only marks China’s first Olympic gold since it became a Winter Games event in 2014, but it was also the country’s first gold medal at the 2026 Games.
It’s also Yiming’s fourth career Olympic medal. He previously won gold in the big air and silver in the slopestyle at the 2022 Games, along with capturing a bronze early in the Milano Cortina Games in the big air event.
Hasegawa’s silver medal marks his best finish in the slopestyle at one of the big three winter events (Olympics, World Championships, X Games). He’s also the first men’s athlete from Japan to medal in this event.
Canter was able to wrestle away the bronze on his final run. The American flipped an extra rotation on his last rail element to bump his score to 79.36, just beating out Norway’s Marcus Kleveland to make the podium.