How the Bethonico brothers went from explaining SBX as "surfing on snow" to making history for Brazil at Gangwon 2024
When Noah Bethonico missed out on the podium at Lausanne 2020, his younger brother Zion took over the mission at Gangwon 2024 – and delivered a historic milestone for Brazil, Noah by his side at the finish area and on the ski lift.
Snowboard
There were two things Zion Bethonico was listening to on the day he won Brazil’s first ever medal at a Winter Youth Olympics or Winter Olympics: trash metal band Slayer and his older brother Noah.
Slayer took over Bethonico’s playlist as he warmed up for his snowboard cross race at the Welli Hilli Park Ski Resort at Gangwon 2024, while his brother’s voice is what he heard on the ski lift in between all of his seven snowboard cross runs on Saturday 20 January.
Noah Bethonico is a Youth Olympian from Lausanne 2020. He missed out on a medal there, finishing 11th in boardercross, but that made him even more enthusiastic when his younger sibling won a history-making bronze at Gangwon 2024.
“I was right next to it,” Noah Bethonico told Olympics.com about watching the Big Final by the finish line. “I was filming and I don't even know if I filmed properly. I just ran as fast as I could to go hug him. My body, I couldn't even feel my body… I just ran as fast as I could.”
“He paved the way for me,” a jubilant Zion Bethonico added. “And here I am, this time with the third.”
Olympics.com spoke to the brothers about making history for their country, leaving Brazilian summers behind to chase winter, the sport their mother forbade them from doing, and why they are ruling the pin trade at the Athletes' Village.
The Bethonicos: A family on snowboards
With a Brazilian motocross champion for a father, the Bethonico brothers sought the adrenaline of racing from a young age.
Their mother, however, quickly ruled out motocross as an option.
“I always wanted to ride motocross since I was little, but my mom wouldn't let me,” Noah said. “She said it was too dangerous. My dad crashed way too many times and she never gave me a bike, so I had to go and use my friends' bikes. And I ride, but I never competed. My parents never let me.”
What their parents let them do was snowboard.
Their father took the family on a snowboarding trip to Snowmass in Colorado, USA during the summer vacation in the Southern Hemisphere, and from their first runs both brothers were hooked.
“I just fell in love with it, and it's been my life,” Zion recalled. “On my very first lesson, I was probably seven years old, and [there were] lots of falls. It's inevitable in snowboarding. Skiing is a little bit easier when you start off, but once you get the hang of snowboarding, it's a lot better.
"Yeah, we have a lot more fun,” he added with a wink.
Zion Bethonico (blue bib) in action during the Gangwon 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games.
Noah started competing professionally at age 15, and Zion at 13. Now 20 and 17, respectively, they have spent the last few years chasing winter. They stay in Brazil during the colder months and travel to North America when the Brazilian summer comes in.
When not on snow, other board sports keep them in riding shape.
“I do surf a very tiny bit and skateboard back in Brazil. I actually have my own little pump track at my house in Brazil,” Zion said. “Any board sport translates completely to this. I have a few friends that have never snowboarded before, but do a lot of those sports, and when they get on, they don't have the inevitable first crashes. It translates.”
As the only boardercross riders on Team Brazil, the brothers get a fair share of questions when they say what sport they compete in.
“People don't really understand snowboarding,” Noah said. “I have to compare boardercross to motocross and be like, ‘Yeah, but it's on snow. We don't have motors and we're on snowboards. It's like surfing on snow’.”
Noah Bethonico (red bib) competed in snowboard cross at Lausanne 2020.
From Lausanne 2020 to Gangwon 2024 with brotherly ski lift advice
Due to age restrictions, athletes tend to get only one opportunity to compete at the Youth Olympic Games. So far, there have been no double participants. For Noah Bethonico, however, it felt like he participated at two Games, given how much he was invested in his brother’s run at Gangwon 2024.
The siblings competed together at the 2023 FIS Junior World Championships in Italy where Zion clinched his quota for the Winter Youth Olympics.
“It was insane because I knew that the result that we got there was going to define if he would come or not. And we both got out in the same round, but he got out in fourth and I got out in third place,” Noah said. “And then I was so anxious. I got to the top, like, ‘Did he qualify? Is he going to go to the YOG?’
“I knew that if he came, he would have a medal on his chest. I was 100 per cent sure, and that's all I told him since we got here: ‘You can do this, you're the best. You're strong, you're confident, you're the best rider here’.”
Noah kept up a steady stream of those confidence-boosting words throughout the Gangwon 2024 competition as he accompanied his brother on every chairlift ride between the runs.
“I would literally just be telling him that he can do it,” Noah said. “His first heat, he fell down. Some guy ran into him and he got third place, so he was kind of like, ‘OK, this sucks. I just got here and I already fell’, and I was like, ‘Dude, just forget about it. This is the past. This already happened. Think about the future. Look for your next heats. You're going to win every single heat now. You can do this’. And he did.”
With bruised and increasingly aching ribs, Zion Bethonico did go on to win all the next heats until the semi-final, while his brother and parents cheered him on from the spectator area.
“I've been in a lot of pain the whole day, and it's gotten a lot worse now. And, if it weren't for them, I wouldn't be that motivated and been able to ignore all that,” Zion said. “They're just very loud. Just cheering, cheering, cheering and raising their hands."
"Every single heat I won was like I was getting a gold medal for them" - Zion Bethonico to Olympics.com
Zion Bethonico with his father and brother at Gangwon 2024.
Zion Bethonico: The most-sought pin trader in the Athletes’ Village
The Bethonico family's boisterous support helped Brazil clinch their first-ever medal at a Winter Youth Olympics or Winter Olympics Games. And Zion Bethonico is confident it will not be the last.
“Brazil has so much potential for any sport at all,” he said. “We have very talented people who are doing many different things. And just here we have [another] 17 athletes who qualified for the Youth Olympics, and I believe at least one more of them are going to bring a medal home.”
The Brazilian delegation is small compared to the others and, as Zion quickly found out, that puts him in a strategic position when negotiating pin trades in the Athletes’ Village.
“It's just filled with pins,” he said of his accreditation lanyard. “I got too many to count because I got a full bag. I traded like 20 with many different countries.
“[The Brazilian], they're the rarest. I managed to trade one of mine for three because there's just not that many Brazilian athletes.”
Now aside from a lanyard full of pins, Bethonico will have another special memento to put around his neck – the Youth Olympic Games medal.
As the younger of the brothers crossed the finish line, both soaked in the moment.
“It means the world for me,” Noah said. “It was all that he worked hard to get, and it's an example for me as his older brother to work harder because he did what I couldn't do and that just proves how much work he put into this result.”
“I'll take this in life with me, but I plan to go a lot higher,” Zion promised. “The next step is the Olympic podium, for sure.”
With his older brother by his side as Zion Bethonico prepares for Milano Cortina 2026, the next historic milestone for Brazil may not be far away.