When England gets a tiny glimpse of snow, there’s either grimacing or joyful hopes of a day off.
But we are now deep into ski and snowboard season, and there’s a British eighteen-year-old eating up the slopes and the really really big slopes.
Mia Brookes is a freestyle snowboarder, competing in a handful of events at the World Cup and X Games.
Since the 2022/23 season, Brookes has an impressive eleven overall podium finishes so far.
At the beginning of January, she secured back-to-back Big Air World Cup wins, after earning the highest scores in both Beijing and Klagenfurt – she then finished third in Kreischberg behind Anna Gasser and Reira Iwabuchi.
Two weekends later, she got a perfect birthday present, winning gold in Laax in the FIS Snowboard Slopestyle World Cup.
The Brit is also the youngest World Champion in the history of snowboarding, after she won Slopestyle gold in Georgia in 2023.
Her talent also led to her winning BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year the same year.
As well as the World Cup events, Brookes competes in the popular X Games.
In this year’s competition in Aspen, two medals were handed to her at Buttermilk Mountain, despite being the youngest in the field for the second consecutive year.
Brookes earned silver in the Knuckle Huck (a non-Olympic event), bronze in the Slopestyle, and was fourth place in Big Air.
The Knuckle Huck event was inspired by Marcus Kleveland who used the ‘knuckle’ of a jump on purpose to show his freestyle creativity.
The World Cup season continues in Aspen on the first of February with both Big Air and Slopestyle.
The Slopestyle events will then continue in Calgary and Flachau, before the season concludes with the World Championships in St. Moritz in March.
