'Proud' snowboarder stays focused on self en route to winning bronze

Yu Seung-eun of South Korea celebrates after finishing her second run during the final of the women's big air snowboard event at the Winter Olympics at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, Italy, Feb. 9. Yonhap

MILAN — As she stood at the top of the slope, with one competitor after another going down toward the ramp in the women's big air final of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics on Monday, South Korean snowboarder Yu Seung-eun had no idea where she was on the leaderboard.

The 18-year-old was so locked in, and that singular focus on own performance helped lift Yu to the podium as the bronze medalist and made her the first South Korean woman to win an Olympic snowboard medal.

She finished with 171.00 points after three runs — the sum of her two best scores out of three — at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, north of Milan. Kokomo Murase of Japan won the gold medal with 179.00 points and Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand grabbed the silver with 172.25 points.

"What I discussed with the coaches upstairs was not to watch the other competitors and just focus on doing my own thing," Yu said afterward, according to the Olympic Information Service. "So I didn't even know what place I was in. I didn't even know I was in medal contention."

She was in second place after the first run, thanks to 87.75 points earned by landing a backside triple cork 1440 mute grab. It involves flipping three times off-axis while making four full rotations with the front hand grabbing between the toes in front of the front binding.

"I never landed that one successfully in practice. But I felt really confident about it during practice," Yu said. "I was like, 'I'm going to land this for real in the competition.'"

She grabbed the overall lead after putting up 83.25 points in the second run with a frontside triple cork 1440 Indy grab, doing three off-axis inversions and four full rotations, plus a grab between the feet on the toe edge.

After pulling it off, Yu took off her board and emphatically tossed it aside in celebration. An amused South Korean commentator called it "a board flip," a nod to a bat flip by a baseball player after a home run.

So why such a big celebration?

"That's because I just succeeded in landing that frontside 1440 right here for the first time on snow," she said. "So, wow, I was totally pumped and just threw the board. Before the Olympics, I just did it on the airbag. It wasn't perfect back then, either. But after trying some lower-level tricks here, I thought, 'Oh, I can do this spin', and gave it a shot."

Yu, who had to miss the late part of 2024 and most of 2025 with assorted injuries, said she kept trying to push herself by saying, "I can do it next time."

"I'm very proud of myself right now," she said. "It feels like such an honour to snowboard for the country of South Korea. I feel like I showed we can snowboard like this."