Japan’s snowboarders are having an excellent season at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. On Friday, Ayumu Hirano won Japan’s first ever gold medal in snowboarding after making Olympic history by landing a triple cork 1440 – a perilously difficult stunt that involves making four full rotations in the air while simultaneously performing three off-axis flips. The excitement continues, however, with three Japanese snowboarders set to appear in the women’s big air final on February 15.
Kokomo Murase, Reira Iwabuchi and Miyabi Onitsuka each pulled off stellar performances in Monday’s big air qualifying event which saw the snowboarders rank in the top five. A clean sweep for Japan is not out of the question this year – Onitsuka, Murase and Iwabuchi took gold, silver and bronze respectively in the women’s big air event at the X Games Aspen 2020 – but the trio will be facing some fierce competition. Here’s what you need to know about these medal hopefuls.
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Kokomo Murase
Kokomo Murase made history in 2018 after becoming the world’s youngest snowboarder to win a gold medal at the Winter X Games – at the time, she was just 13. Now, the 17-year-old Murase could be set to break another record as the world’s youngest female snowboarding champion in Olympic history, a title currently held by USA’s Chloe Kim.
Murase is currently ranked in second place following the women’s snowboard big air qualifier, where she came away with a best score of 171 points. Murase is just 5.5 points behind 20-year-old Zoi Sadowski-Synott of New Zealand who has a total of 176.5 points. Sadowski-Synott took bronze in the women’s big air competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics and won gold at the Beijing 2022 Games in the women’s snowboard slopestyle event last week.
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Reira Iwabuchi
This is Reira Iwabuchi’s second time competing in the Winter Olympic Games. At 16 years old, the snowboarder made her Olympic debut in Pyeongchang in 2018 where she placed 14th in the women’s slopestyle final and came in fourth in the big air final. Since then, the 20-year-old (whose nickname is Leila) has made an impressive climb through the ranks and even came out in fifth at the women’s slopestyle final on February 6.
It appears Iwabuchi has made equally significant improvements in the big air event as the athlete came out of Monday’s qualification with a best score of 158.5 points. She is now 12.5 points behind Murase and 18 points behind Sadowski-Synott.
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Miyabi Onitsuka
It’s hard to keep track of Miyabi Onitsuka’s medal count. According to her Olympic profile, the 23-year-old is a three-time World Championship medallist and has 10 World Cup podiums on top of four X Games medals. While Onitsuka came in fifth with a best score of 154.25 at the big air qualifier, she has a few tricks up her sleeve to give her a leg up in Tuesday’s final, including the cab double cork 1260 – a three-and-half-rotation jump that very few snowboarders have been able to land in competition. Onitsuka is just one spot behind Canada's Blouin Laurie, who came fourth in qualification with a best score of 156.25.
The women’s big air final will kick off at 10.30am JST on February 15. Here’s how to watch the competition live.
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