Snowboarder Su Yiming delivers China its 1st gold of Milan Cortina Games on his birthday

Another Olympic medal for Su in the Italian Alps, and medal No. 4 in an incredibly successful and still young career for the former child actor.

Su celebrated his 22nd birthday with a second career gold medal on Wednesday. Su was the winner of an error-prone men's slopestyle final, when he was the only one of the 12 finalists to complete his three runs through the course's rails and jumps without any falls or major errors.

Taiga Hasegawa was second with his best score of 82.13 and added to Japan’s haul of seven snowboarding medals in Livigno. American rider Jake Canter, 22, claimed the bronze in his first Games.

Mark McMorris of Canada, a three-time bronze medalist, finished eighth two weeks after being concussed in training.

The tension seemed almost too much for Su after he failed to improve his best score of of 82.41 points on his third run. He knew that he had left the door open. That was when he wiped his cheeks while watching seven opponents each take their final shot — and fail to better his mark.

“I just started realizing this is my last run of the Milan Olympics," Su said. “It just came up to my head and then I started to realized today was my birthday, my parents are here to supporting me and my coaches, everybody out here supporting me... The emotions just came and I just can’t help to stop crying.”

Moments later, those tears turned to an expression of joy when he stepped onto the top spot on the podium. He had given China is first gold of these Games and medals No. 6 and 7 of the country's overall medal tally.

Su burst onto the Olympic stage when he won gold in big air and silver in slopestyle at the Beijing 2022 Games. He then took two years off to recover from what he called fatigue. Then came recurrent ankle injuries that required him to compete with painkillers to get back into form for these Games.

Last week, he took bronze in big air in Livigno as a prelude to his slopestyle gold.

In Su's words, “It’s all paid off.”

McMorris fights an ‘absolute war’

McMorris' day got off to a bad start when he crashed in practice.

“Broke a board, completely cranked my neck,” he said. “It’s been an absolute war.”

And it didn't get much better for the four-time Olympian, who a hard fall on his last run of the final.

“Super proud to be in there, disappointed with the way my runs came together today,” the 32-year-old McMorris said. “I’ve had pretty much 90% of my career go my way in all the big events, this event not being one of them, and it’s tough because I work super hard.”

The Livigno slopestyle course consists of three rail elements and three jumps. Judges score riders on their creativity and execution of tricks and their routine as a whole. Riders got three chances to perform their routines with only their best score counting.

The women’s slopestyle final is later on Wednesday.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics