As the snow season approaches, some of the top winter games athletes in the world are set to descend on New Zealand.
Newshub can reveal that 60 Managed Isolation and Quarantine spots have been granted for the Winter Games in August.
This will allow Olympic hopefuls to compete and train in New Zealand ahead of next year's Beijing Winter Games.
Finn Bilous and Tiarn Collins are stoked they will have top international competitors joining them at home this winter.
"That's gonna be sick they're all our friends anyway," Collins tells Newshub
Bilous added; "Yeah absolutely frothing about it. To have friends down just to ski with for one and to be able to push each other on the hill is gonna be a pretty cool thing."
The Winter Games is being held at Cardrona in Wanaka this August and the event has secured 60 MIQ spots for internationals to enter the country.
"We're looking for the best of the best," Winter Games chief executive Marty Toomey says.
"The people that you would expect to see on the podium will come for the winter Olympics
"The Winter Games usually has up to 500 internationals but last year was forced to run a scaled-down local event.
The 2021 event at Cardrona shouldn't have any problems attracting the very best talent less than a year out from the Olympics."There won't be another halfpipe in the world at this time of the year," Toomey says.
"So athletes will look at that and they're looking for the opportunity to get in.
"That has seen the interest expressed from the face of the Beijing Olympics with 17-year-old sensation and X-Games gold medalist Eileen Gu.
Gu will be one of many making the most of the Southern Hemisphere's best facilities.
"Last year with the borders closed we had fantastic training opportunities here when the rest of the world didn't," Snow Sport NZ chief executive Nic Cavanagh says.
And it's not just on the mountains that the internationals will relish New Zealand.
The simple act of socialising in the COVID-19 world is sure to appeal.
"I think they're gonna feel extra lucky to be in [New Zealand]," Bilous tells Newshub. "I guess [New Zealand] is the dream land right now. The rest of the world is still in lockdown."
With other countries still locked down, the Winter Games can lock in the cream of the crop this winter.
Watch the full story above.
