The eyes of the world were on Sandbach snowboard sensation Mia Brookes on Monday night when she set the benchmark for her rivals to follow, narrowly missing out on a podium place at the Winter Olympics.
The sight of the 19-year-old spinning through the night air at Livigno as she attempted four and a half rotations before landing – the “backside 1620” – in her final jump in the big air competition will be an enduring image that will last long after the Milan-Cortina games have ended.
A 1620 means spinning four and a half full rotations in the air, turning away from the take-off before landing back on the snow. The former Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College student had to settle for fourth place despite a dazzling final run, which included the elusive 1620 move that commentators said would have been good enough for a gold medal … if she had completed her final rotation.
Ms Brookes, who first snowboarded when just 18 months old at Kidsgrove Ski Centre, remained upbeat even though she missed out on a podium place.
Of her performance in the final jump, she told the Team GB website: “I’ve never tried it before on snow but it’s the Olympics. I gave it everything I could and more but there was just a bit too much power.
“To land that would have been so special. Only one woman has ever done it before and I want to be making history.”
The only other woman to have completed the backside 1620 previously was Kokomo Murase, of Japan – the gold-medal winner in Monday’s final.
She added: “Koko is the only girl who has that trick right now and so if I had landed it, I would have been the second woman to do that trick.
“It’s really special and it would have been insane. I did not want to do it at all but sometimes you just have to and grit your teeth.”
Team GB’s website reported that Miss Brookes had only ever tried the trick on an airbag in practice before, but knew she needed to pull something special out of the bag to get back into contention.
“I gave that everything I could and it’s not like a trick I can do,” she said. “I gave it everything and more.
“I thought I had it and I did to my feet, but I just gave it too much power.
“I was evidently listening to my music too loud. It’s a gnarly trick and it’s high risk.”
GB Snowsport’s website reported her as saying: “I pushed myself way more than I would have done in any other comp tonight, so I am just stoked that I pushed myself through that and I am stoked I tried that trick, to be honest.”
She said: “It was definitely quite nerve-racking, you have got to give it everything you have got, because you only get once every four years to try it, so it is definitely a lot of pressure, but other than that, it is really chill.”
However, Olympic medal glory still beckons for Miss Brookes. She will be going for gold in the snowboard slopestyle event, which begins on Monday, just weeks after winning the same event at the sport’s coveted X Games in Aspen, Colorado.
As a youngster, she lived in a campervan with snowboarding parents Nigel and Vicky. They travelled around the European snowboarding circuit, while their daughter used the van as a temporary classroom, juggling her schoolwork with competing.
Three years ago, Miss Brookes made snowboarding history at the Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships when she became the youngest world champion.
In 2020, the year she secured second place in the Europa Cup slopestyle competition when aged just 13, Sandbach Town Council gave her a £250 grant towards snowboard training.
In the funding application, her mum had said: “I realise this is not your ‘normal’ sport, especially in mountain-less Cheshire, but I suppose this makes it all the more incredible and interesting as we don’t have mountains and Mia is at this level already on a worldwide scale!”
(Photo: BBC screengrab).
