Kyle David Smaine (June 27, 1991 – January 29, 2023) was an American

freestyle skier Freestyle skiing is a skiing discipline comprising aerials, moguls, cross, half-pipe, slopestyle and big air as part of the Winter Olympics. It can consist of a skier performing aerial flips and spins and can include skiers sliding rails and ...

. He won a gold medal in halfpipe at the

FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships 2015 The 2015 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships were held in Kreischberg, Austria from January 15–25, 2015. In 2014, the FIS (International Ski Federation) decided to merge the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships with the FIS Sn ...

. Smaine met Jenna Dramise in 2010 while hitchhiking in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. They married on November 18, 2022. Smaine died alongside an Austrian skier in an avalanche on Mount Norikura, located in the northern part of the Hida Mountains near Tsugaike Ski Resort in Otari,

Nagano Nagano may refer to: Places * Nagano Prefecture, a prefecture in Japan ** Nagano (city), the capital city of the same prefecture *** Nagano 1998, the 1998 Winter Olympics *** Nagano Olympic Stadium, a baseball stadium in Nagano *** Nagano Universi ...

, Japan, on January 29, 2023, at the age of 31.

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* * 1991 births 2023 deaths American male freestyle skiers Deaths in avalanches Natural disaster deaths in Japan 21st-century American men People from Apple Valley, California {{US-freestyle-skiing-bio-stub