Otago snowboarder Hamish Bagley competes in the final of the halfpipe at the Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Photo by Reuters.

Otago athletes Beau-James Wells, Hamish Bagley and Samantha Poots have each had top-10 finishes at the inaugural Winter Youth Olympics in Austria.

Of the early New Zealanders in action, Wells - as predicted - played the starring role, and narrowly missed out on a medal.

He made a sizzling start to the men's freeski halfpipe with a score of 82.50 in his first run on the slopes of Innsbruck.

That was good enough for the Wanaka skier to qualify No 1 for the final, ahead of Switzerland's Kai Mahler (76.50).

Wells improved his score to 85.50 in his first run in the final, adding an 83.75 in the second. But he was overtaken by Mahler (95.00), Finland's Lauri Kivari (90.00) and American Aaron Blunck (87.50).

Bagley (Arrowtown) finished 10th in the men's snowboard halfpipe.

He qualified for the semifinal with a best score of 64.75, then qualified for the final with a run of 68.50.

In the final, Bagley fell back to 57.25 in his first run and 46.25 in his second. The event was won by rising American star Ben Ferguson, with a best score of 93.25.

Poots (Wanaka) finished seventh in the women's freeski halfpipe.

She missed the final, which only featured six skiers. But Poots did well to recover from a poor first run (23.00) with a score of 52.00 in her second.

Other New Zealanders in action included Wellsford's Harry Izard-Price (31st in super G) and Hawkes Bay's Piera Hudson (17th in Super G).