Kiwi wins bronze

She was last year's New Zealand Snow Sports athlete of the year, took 13th place in her preferred slopestyle discipline earlier in the Games and admitted she was "pretty devastated I couldn't put down a clean run and see where that got me".

She took up snowboarding at nine and in 2012 "I realised that snowboarding was the sport for me. I loved it so much I wanted to skip school. I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics and the X Games".

The disappointment of the slopestyle event stayed with her and she more than made up for that today.

Sadowski-Synnott moved from Australia to New Zealand with her family when she was six. She made her World Cup debut in 2016 at Copper Mountain in the United States.

She missed with the world junior championships last year in the Czech Republic with a shoulder injury.

Her most notable achievement before today was winning a slopestyle World Cup, also at Spindleruv Mlyn in the Czech Republic.

Of her ambition to get to the Olympics when she was young, Sadowski-Synnott wrote it off as "just a dream for a little kid" – which once again proving dreams do come true.

This article was first posted at nzherald.co.nz and was republished here with permission.