Kokomo Murase, 21-year-old Japanese snowboarder, added a gold medal to her World Championship in Big air, one of the most extreme sports at the Winter Olympic Games 2026, in which snowboarders descend a big slope to perform tricks on a single big jump.
For the games, Kokomo chose to do a backside triple cork 1440 mute, scoring 89.75 points, followed by a similar, but frontside 1440 trick to have a total combined score of 172.25, securing a gold medal over New Zealander Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and South Korean Yu Seungeun (171.00 points).
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As she explained (via TokyoWeekender), winning a bronze medal in Beijing 2022 made her happy at first, but she grew dissatisfied over time. "The bronze medal felt heavy, but gold is different. It's not just the weight, it feels like everything I've worked for up until now is packed into it. It's incredibly heavy in that sense."
Murase earned Japan's second gold medal so far in the 2026 Olympics, as well as the first ever women's snowboard gold medal for the country. She will have another chance at Olympic gold next week, for the women's slopestyle.