Aspen, Colorado, USA (26 January 2025) – Luca Harrington (Wānaka, 20) has added his second X Games medal to his collection, taking home silver in the ski big air at his debut X Games.
Harrington, who initially was going to X Games as an alternate in both of his medal events, has walked away from the weekend with a gold and a silver medal, a result that has wowed the snow sports community.
After his winning slopestyle performance, Harrington was one of the favourites in tonight’s event. He was in esteemed company, with four of the eight skiers returning gold medallists. With a stacked field, the expectation was that world first tricks would be delivered, and the excited crowd was not disappointed.
In what has become trademark approach for Harrington, he came out swinging in the playoffs and put down a triple corked 1980 with a tweaked tail grab, going huge and punching his ticket to the finals with ease.
Harrington put down a repeat triple corked 1980 and was sitting in bronze medal position after the first of two finals runs. Despite sitting in medal position, Harrington upped the ante and added an extra 180 degrees of rotation, landing his first ever triple corked 2160 tail grab (six full rotations). He was rewarded a huge score of 97.00 by the judges, just one point behind the leader.
Unable to believe what he had just done, Harrington exclaimed “I did it!” as he pulled into the bottom of the course and was surrounded by fellow competitors and his family congratulating him. This was his first time ever landing this trick on snow, and he last landed it on an airbag over a year ago.
Winner Miro Tabanelli of Italy made history landing a double corked 2340 cuban grab for the first time ever in skiing. Matej Svancer of Austria rounded out the podium in third with a never been done trick of his own, in what was one of the most progressive ski big air events in memory.
This wraps up the 2025 Aspen X Games, where the NZ Park & Pipe team will be bringing home their highest ever medal count from a single X Games, five (two gold, one silver and two bronze).
The kiwi athletes will get the chance to take on the world class courses again at the Aspen World Cup, which is starting with the qualification rounds on Thursday this coming week.
