From the chaos of snowboard cross, a repeat champ.

Feb. 12, 2026, 10:55 a.m. ETThink snowboard and you think dazzling tricks, jumps and spins, with judges deciding the winner. But snowboard cross is a race, and it’s a chaotic one, with four athletes racing each other pell-mell down the mountain, around sweeping turns and over jumps.ImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesWith all this chaos, you would not expect a repeat winner, but that’s what happened at the Winter Games on Thursday as Alessandro Hämmerle of Austria raced to another gold medal in the men’s event.ImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe repeat looked unlikely nearly the entire race as Hämmerle sat in third almost the whole way, in an event in which passing isn’t that easy. Yet he took the last jump better than his opponents and made it to the finish line first by a whisker. ImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesHämmerle just seems to have a nose for the finish line. His title four years ago was by inches as well.ImageCredit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesVictor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.Gabriela Bhaskar is a Times photographer correspondent based in Los Angeles.