Twins buzzing after being named in NZ team

Twins Cam, left, and Fin Melville Ives, 19, of Wanaka, with their parents, Karen and Neil, after being named in the New Zealand team to compete at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games next year. PHOTO: TRACEY ROXBURGH

One will face forward, the other will be going sideways.

But they will be backing each other at next year’s Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games.

Wānaka twins Fin and Cam Melville Ives, 19, were yesterday announced as two of the first eight athletes selected to represent New Zealand at the 2026 Games, to be held from February 6 to 22.

Fin has been selected for the freeski halfpipe while Cam will compete in the snowboard halfpipe.

New Zealand team chef de mission Marty Toomey said it was the fourth Winter Olympics in a row the country had a set of brothers competing in the halfpipe, though this was the first time it had selected twins in the discipline, "one facing forward, one facing sideways".

In February, Fin became the youngest New Zealander to win a FIS Freeski World Cup with a dream run in the Freeski Halfpipe in Calgary — it was his maiden World Cup and first World Cup podium — while Cam won the 2025 Corvatsch European Cup Snowboard Halfpipe and finished second in the 2025 LAAX European Cup Premium Halfpipe.

The identikits said they woke up to an email on Wednesday confirming they had booked their slots to Italy.

"It’s just so surreal," Cam said.

"We’ve been working up to this one for a couple of years, so it’s such a chill one to wake up to in the morning to see the email and confirmation that you’re going."

The brothers started skiing at the tender age of 3 before Cam switched to snowboarding a year later.

By age 5 they were in their first junior nationals.

Going to the Olympics as twins was, on its own, an epic experience, but made better because they would be competing in different disciplines, they said.

However, they were both keeping their focus on enjoying the experience and treating it as "just another competition".

"I’m so hyped to have the opportunity to go to the Olympics, and if I manage to have fun and put down my best run, I’m going to be so hyped," Fin said.

Also announced in yesterday’s team was Wānaka’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, 24, New Zealand’s most decorated Winter Olympian.

She made history in Beijing winning our first Winter Olympic gold medal in snowboard slopestyle, and then won a silver in big air — she had earlier won a bronze in big air at PyeongChang in 2018.

"Pressure is a funny thing," she said.

The first athletes named to represent New Zealand at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games next year (from left) Ben Barclay, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, Alice Robinson, Luca Harrington, Cam Melville-Ives, Finn Melville-Ives and Ruby Star Andrews in Queenstown yesterday. Absent is Luke Harrold.

"I think, for me, I just care about what the people closest to me think ... I kind of keep my head down and just try to snowboard my best ... that’s the most important thing, and not try to think of anything else."

Queenstown ski racer Alice Robinson, 23, would also be attending her third Winter Olympics.

This year she became the first Kiwi ski racer to win a World Championships medal with silver in the giant slalom, while in 2025, she finished on the podium at every giant slalom World Cup race she competed in, bringing her career total to 17 World Cup medals, including four golds.

"For sure there’s higher expectations," she said.

"I’ve been doing well, so people expect me to keep doing well.

"But I think the most [pressure] comes from myself ... in a sense, I feel more prepared than I have."

Snow Sports NZ chief executive Nic Cavanagh said other New Zealand Team announcements were expected in late January — and there was a chance Milano Cortina 2026 could see the biggest contingent of snowsports athletes to ever represent the country at an Olympic Winter Games.