Queen of the slopes Zoi Sadowski-Synnott nabbed the supreme award at the Otago Sports Awards last night.
She headed off some tough competition from the likes of motocross world champion Courtney Duncan, who won the supreme award in 2020 and 2021, and ski ace Nico Porteous.
It is her third supreme award. She won the prize in 2018 and 2019 on the back of compelling form on the snowboard.
But in the past 12 months the 21-year-old has taken the sport to a new level.
Sadowski-Synnott won gold in the slopestyle and silver in the big air at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
There were plenty of other wonderful achievements on her resume, but gold and silver are rather hard to top.
She also collected the sportswoman of the year title. In any other year fellow finalists Duncan and cricketer Suzie Bates would have been worthy winners.
Fellow snowboarder Tiarn Collins picked up the sportsman of the year title, edging multisport competitor and Coast to Coast champion Braden Currie and kayaker Finn Butcher, who won silver at the world extreme slalom kayaking championships.
Collins managed a breakthrough world cup title in a fine season.
Porteous would have been the warm favourite to win the sportsman of the year crown, but he is just 20 so he falls into the junior sportsman of the year category.
The outstanding young man won gold in the halfpipe at the Beijing Winter Olympics and picked up the junior sportsman award, ahead of skier Gustav Legnavsky and Campbell Wright, who competes in biathlon.
Olympian Erika Fairweather was a standout candidate for junior sportswoman of the year.
She astonished even herself with an incredible swim to make the final of the 400m freestyle at last year’s Tokyo Olympics. The teenager finished the year ranked as fourth best in the world in the event.
Not bad for a then 17-year-old.
Skier Ruby Andrews and handball player Annalise Wilson were the other finalists in the category.
The team of the year went to the Otago Sparks. They made both the T20 final and one-day final this season, winning the one-day final against Wellington by 138 runs.
The Sparks had not won a one-day game in two years prior to the summer, so it was quite a turnaround.
The Otago Whalers and Southern United were the beaten finalists.
The para athlete of the year was a shootout between three incredible competitors — long jumper Anna Grimaldi, javelin thrower Holly Robinson and skier Adam Hall. Grimaldi and Robinson both won gold in their event at Tokyo and Hall nabbed two bronze medals at the Winter Paralympics.
The judges opted for Grimaldi, who had a long road back from injury and that backstory may have given her the edge.
Sean Thompson won coach of the year for his good work with Sadowski-Synnott.
Martin Toomey was named official of the year, and cricketer Jacob Cumming and rower Pipi Horan collected the emerging talent awards.
The awards were held at Otago Polytechnic Hub, with just over 400 guests attending.
Cyclist Alison Palmer (nee Shanks) and the Wells family (Stacey, Bruce, Josiah, Byron, Beau-James and Jackson) were inducted into the Otago Sports Hall of Fame.
