Wanaka freeskier Finn Bilous has won New Zealand's first medal at the Winter Youth Olympics after claiming silver in the halfpipe.
Bilous nailed a solid start in the first of his three runs with his safety run, happy to land clean tricks and come away with a score of 89.60 points from a possible 100 to take the early lead in Lillehammer, Norway.
With American rival Birk Irving a close second on 84.80, Bilous needed to lift in his second run.
He delivered with a personal best performance, landing a run he'd learnt at a recent training camp but never used in competition to increase his score to 90.80.
Irving responded with a 93.00 effort, and although Bilous again upped his score to 92.20 on his final run, it just wasn't quite enough.
"I'm really happy with the way I skied today," Bilous said.
"Birk came through with an amazing run. Now I've got the slopestyle event [on Sunday NZT] to look forward to."
The freeski halfpipe rounded out a successful day of competition for the New Zealand team after Tiarn Collins and Rakai Tait took fifth and sixth in the men's snowboard halfpipe.
Newshub.
