Champion US freestyle skier dies in avalanche in Japan
A US freestyle skier has died in an avalanche in Japan, his family has said.
Kyle Smaine had gone to Japan because of the “unbelievable snow quality,” he had previously written on Instagram.
“This is what brings me back to Japan each winter,” he said.
Mr Smaine won gold in the halfpipe at the 2015 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships.
The skier was in Nagano Prefecture on Sunday in the middle of Honshu Island when he died, according to his father William Smaine, NBC News reported.
Nagano police said that as many as five men from the US and Austria were caught up in the avalanche that occurred on the eastern side of Mount Hakuba Norikura, Reuters reported.
The authorities said earlier that the five men had been skiing in two groups, with three of them being able to climb down the mountain on their own, while two of them, Mr Smaine and an unnamed man, were stuck on the 8,100 feet (2468 metres) high mountain.
Both of them were found without vital signs, Reuters noted.
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