Dale Begg-Smith of Australia, who has made a fortune in the online marketing business, struck gold in men's freestyle moguls skiing on Wednesday at the Turin Games.
The Canadian-born Begg-Smith, who off the ski slopes said he ran a successful computer marketing company, took gold with 26.77 points after backflip with an iron cross and 720 off-axis jumps.
Mikko Ronkainen of Finland won the silver with 26.62 points, and the bronze medal went to Toby Dawson of the US with 26.30 points.
"I'm very happy to win gold for Australia," said the 21-year-old Begg-Smith, who was born in Vancouver but moved to Australia as a teenager.
"I just wanted to ski as clean as possible because I knew that if it wasn't that points would be taken off and you could drop down pretty quick."
Begg-Smith's gold was the third Olympic title for Australian athletes after Steve Bradley (short track speed skating) and Alisa Camplin (freestyle aerials) won gold in 2002.
Dawson was the only member of the highly-touted US team to grab a medal as Jeremy Bloom took sixth place, 2002 silver medalist Travis Mayer was seventh and Travis Crabal took ninth.
The 2002 Olympic champion Janne Lahtela fell to 16th after failing to cleanly land his second jump while his younger cousin Juuso Lahtela finished eighth.
Wednesday's competition was supposed to see the future of the sport as a number of skiers were expected to attempt 1080 jumps -- where they would spin three times in the air.
Just four years after off-axis and inverted jumps were barred, the 18-year-old Canadian Alexandre Bilodeau was the only competitor to try the 1080 trick in the finals -- something which the Olympic champion thinks is a good thing.
"I think moguls skiing should remain focused on the technique, which should be just as important as the jumps. Leave the jumps to aerials. And stick to the moguls, that's what we started out doing," Begg-Smith said.
The dual citizen refused to offer too many details about the company he uses to fund his ski career.
"I don't know why we're talking about the company," said Begg-Smith, almost annoyed at the number of questions about the online marketing company he started when he was 13 years old.
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