What’s in the Water in Wānaka?

It’s a question Luca Harrington, a 22-year-old freestyle skier and Olympic medalist who hails from the New Zealand alpine resort town, gets all the time. 

Home to a modest population of about 13,000, Wānaka nevertheless punches above its weight when it comes to producing elite professional skiers and snowboarders.

Of the 10 Kiwis who competed in freeski halfpipe or slopestyle/big air at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, nine count Cardrona as their home mountain. It’s the same story for four of the six snowboard halfpipe and slopestyle/big air athletes who represented New Zealand at the Games. 

What makes this small community such a powerhouse in freestyle skiing and snowboarding? Aw, mate, a local might respond, how much time ya got?

Waiting at the top of an unsealed mountain access road between Wānaka and Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island, past plentiful switchbacks and the occasional rental car mired in a ditch, is the freestyle haven that is Cardrona Alpine Resort. 

The resort boasts the only Superpipe and World Cup slopestyle course in Australasia, including an 80-foot big air jump. Cardrona has played host to World Cup halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air events, as well as competitions like the Jossi Wells Invitational and Shaun White’s halfpipe ski and snowboard competition, The Snow League. 

Cardrona may be the closest resort to Wānaka, but it’s far from the only place to rack up days on snow. The lakeside alpine town is situated within two hours of five distinct ski areas: Cardrona, Treble Cone, Snow Farm, Coronet Peak and The Remarkables. (Don’t be surprised, though, if locals refer you to “Cardies” or “The Remarks.”) 

All are situated in the Southern Alps, or Kā Tiritiri o te Moana. The Southern Alps’ knife-edge ridgelines and steep chutes demand highly technical and advanced riding. The Remarkables, in particular, have nurtured a talented corps of freeride skiers and snowboarders. On their rugged peaks, Kiwis become all-terrain vehicles.

“It’s the Kiwi mentality,” said 20-year-old halfpipe skier Fin Melville Ives. “We have a froth and are always keen to go skiing, even though our weather’s notoriously not very good and extremely windy. So, I feel like it makes us resilient skiers.”

Freeride is another Kiwi success story, deserving of its own feature. Wānaka and the wider South Island have produced multiple Freeride World Tour medalists and champions in the last 15 years, including Sam Smoothy, Craig Murray, 2022 FWT women’s ski champion Jess Hotter and 2026 FWT men’s ski champion Ben Richards.

But it’s Cardrona that serves as New Zealand’s freestyle ski and snowboard epicenter. 

“It’s been incredible to be able to just fly three hours from Australia and get in the halfpipe,” 16-year-old Australian freestyle skier and Olympian Indra Brown said in September. “It’s pretty crazy in the Southern Hemisphere to have a halfpipe up at this time of the year.”

Wānaka Snowsports Club product Mischa Thomas, 18, came up in slopestyle but switched her focus to halfpipe in January 2025. One year later, she was named to New Zealand’s Olympic freeski halfpipe team. That’s the power of having a world-class, regulation-size halfpipe in your backyard.

Since 2025, athletes have also had access to a dry slope and airbag system in Cardrona Valley. Developed over five years by Snow Sports NZ at a cost of NZ$2.3 million, the facility was designed to increase annual training capacity from around 20 sessions per year to as many as 160, with support from High Performance Sport NZ.

And when the last dusting of snow falls on the rugged peaks of the Southern Alps, Kiwi skiers and snowboarders pack up their gear and chase winter training at world-class venues in the Northern Hemisphere, from Saas-Fee and LAAX in Switzerland to Park City and Aspen in the U.S. to China’s Secret Garden. 

But even Swiss pro snowboarder Jonas Hasler believes that when it comes to freestyle training, no resort in the world can top Cardrona. 

Cardrona Alpine Resort runs in the Melville Ives blood. Fin Melville Ives and his twin brother, halfpipe snowboarder Cam, have been taking laps there since age three. Their parents, Neill and Karen, met as snowboard instructors at Aspen in the 1990s before moving to Wānaka to work as instructors at Cardrona. And the twins’ uncle used to cut the pipe at Cardrona, a skill only a handful of people in the world possess. 

Over 13 years, Cam estimates he’s taken at least 2,000 laps through the pipe.

Cardrona’s results speak for themselves. At Beijing 2022, Wānaka locals Nico Porteous and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won New Zealand’s first Olympic gold medals in men’s freeski halfpipe and women’s snowboard slopestyle, respectively. In March 2026, Kiwi halfpipe skier Luke Harrold claimed the men’s title in The Snow League’s inaugural season, in a field that included two-time Olympic gold medalist David Wise of the U.S.

These champions came up through a national system designed to develop elite athletes. In New Zealand, young skiers and snowboarders begin through local school programs, clubs, families and/or private coaches. Snow Sports NZ (“en-zed”), based out of Wānaka, then identifies athletes for its national development team. A robust homeschool program in New Zealand also supports kids who are training at an elite level. 

In a close-knit community like Wānaka, proximity to local heroes seems to wield even more influence. 

“It’s been such a multigenerational thing here in Wānaka and Queenstown,” said Luke Hetzel, General Manager of High Performance at Snow Sports NZ. “You get those forerunners of skiing or snowboarding like the Wells brothers and [2014 Winter Olympian] Christy Prior, and then you put them into this small-town environment. They’ve trailblazed it, and then we’re kind of all elevated because of it.” 

Hetzel jokes that Jossi Wells, one of New Zealand’s most successful and influential winter sports athletes, is referred to as the “Mayor of Wānaka.” Indeed, ask any young freeskier from Harrington to Fin Melville Ives to Porteous, and all cite Wells, a six-time X Games medalist and 2014 Winter Olympian, as a major influence on their careers.

“It’s an honor,” Wells said. “I just fell in love with these sports when I was super young and dedicated myself to doing the best I could. And to know that I inspired another generation, it’s just the icing on the cake.” 

Now 36, Wells is helping nurture the next generation through the Jossi Wells Invitational, which launched at Cardrona in 2016 and held its most recent event there in early September. Later that month, snowboarder Shaun White brought The Snow League to New Zealand for the first time.

“It’s definitely caught on that this is the place to be,” said White. “The local kids are getting inspired by seeing the pros and seeing the best compete right here at home. And then, after they leave, the facilities are still here for the locals.”

Some athletes find that the structure of high-level competition isn’t for them. Porteous, the defending men’s freeski halfpipe Olympic champion heading into Milan Cortina 2026, announced in 2025 he was stepping away from competition to focus on other aspects of his skiing, such as filming and freeriding. 

That, too, is a measure of success for a nation interested in developing not just elite competitors, but well-rounded athletes equipped to pursue different paths. In 2025, Porteous joined Snow Sports NZ’s board as an intern to help shape the future of freeskiing and its development pathways. 

And perhaps that’s ultimately the secret to the outsize influence Wānaka and its surroundings have had on freeski and snowboard competition. The facilities, the national funding, the coaching—all undoubtedly crucial. But in a community that weaves the mountain and outdoor activity into local life in a way that would be unusual in most towns, where local schools give students opportunities to make skiing and snowboarding part of their education, the values begin at home.

Related: The Snow League Tried Something Fresh in New Zealand, and It Was a Hit