Sitting in fourth place with one run left and her Olympic podium hopes hanging by a thread, New Zealand snowboarder Zoi Sadowski Synnott took a moment Wednesday to soak in the Alpine scenery and appreciate another shot at glory.

That brief pause paid off as the 24-year-old nailed her final slopestyle run to claim silver and etch her name in the record books as the most decorated Olympic snowboarder of all time.

Sadowski Synnott took her medal haul to five, dating back to Pyeongchang in 2018. She has one gold, three silvers and one bronze.

“It feels pretty insane, to be honest,” she said on the slopes in the northern Italian town of Livigno, with her latest silver medal hanging around her neck.

She had also claimed a silver at the Milano Cortina Games nine days earlier in the big air contest.

On her final slopestyle run, Sadowski Synnott expertly navigated the bumps and rails of the course and made her dizzying jumps look easy.

She said she did not realise she had just stacked up more medals than any other snowboarder.

“I didn’t know the stats going into the Olympics,” she said. “I just really wanted to represent New Zealand as best I can and represent the sport I love and share it with the world.”

“To have five Olympic medals, it’s pretty sick,” she added.

She said she had “definitely not” imagined such success when she took up snowboarding at age eight. She said there were “zero expectations” for someone from New Zealand, a country not known for winter sports prowess.

“Just being a Kiwi, we’re always a bit of the underdog,” she said. “Any chance we get to show who we are on the world stage, we’ll try and do our best.”

Her drive began simply with “that feeling of slowly getting better and learning new tricks,” she said. “I just love the feeling because it makes me feel alive.”

Asked what she would like to do next, Sadowski Synnott had a refreshingly down-to-earth answer:

“I’m pretty keen to go surfing,” she said.