At the start of Monday Britain had the chance to win two Olympic medals at Livigno Snow Park and open their account for the Games, as well as guarantee another if mixed doubles curlers Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds won their semi-final against Sweden.
But Kirsty Muir fell short of a freeski slopestyle medal by just 0.41 points, and the best the curlers can achieve now is bronze after they were hammered 9-3 by Sweden, with a tense battle for the podium to come on Tuesday.
So as night fell in the Italian Alps, British hopes for a ‘Magic Monday’ rested entirely on the young shoulders of snowboarder Mia Brookes.
Muir even returned to the Livigno Snow Park after her own heartbreak to cheer on her friend and teammate, willing her on to an historic medal: having already become the sport’s youngest world champion, Brookes was aiming to become Britain’s youngest Winter Olympic medallist in nearly eight decades.
But it was not to be as the Olympic debutant finished an agonising fourth. Volunteers escorting the medals through the crowd carried them past Team GB’s chef de mission, Eve Muirhead, who may well have been reliving her own crushing fourth place in Pyeongchang eight years ago as she watched on.
Far from ‘Magic Monday’, it turned out to be a rather melancholy affair.
Not through want of trying, however. Eight years on from first coming to Livigno as a youngster and landing many of her first tricks, 19-year-old Brookes went big. She landed safe runs of 80.75 and 78.75 with her first two tricks, a cab 1440 stalefish and backside 1260 melon. But in a high-scoring field, with each freestyler’s two best runs counting, and sitting in fourth place, she had to go for the unbeatable on her final jump.
The Cheshire teenager waits at the top of the ramp far longer than her rivals, and on her final run the second ticked by unbearably as she settled her board in the snow, heavy metal music blasting in her ears, steeling herself for what she was about to attempt.
She flew down the 165ft-high ramp and launched herself into the air. The target: an incredible four and a half rotations, a backside 1620, a trick which has never been landed in a women’s Olympic competition before.
In the end, she overshot it slightly, doing nearly four and three-quarter rotations and sending plumes of snow up as she landed. She put the ‘big’ in ‘Big Air’, and had it paid off it would have secured her a medal, with the score likely to have been around 92.
As it was, the messy execution meant she did not improve on her previous score, but she had no regrets. She said afterwards: “I could have done a 14 [1440] and maybe got fourth or third, but I also could have done a 16 and land it and won. But I’d rather be in fourth with a 16 than fourth with a 14, so I’m happy I tried it.
“I got it [the jump] to my feet but I just gave it too much power, listening to my music too loud, I spun it too quickly. But I’m pumped. I was listening to a lot of Pantera.”
Japan’s Kokomo Murase took gold with a score of 179, improving on her bronze from Beijing four years ago, and is the only woman currently competing to successfully land a 1620. “If I’d have landed it I would have been the second woman to do that trick,” Brookes continued. “It’s really special. For women’s snowboarding if I’d have landed that it would have been insane.
“I wasn’t planning on it. I didn’t want to do it at all. But I think, sometimes you’ve just got to do it and grit your teeth and get it done. I haven’t even done it for maybe five months now –I’ve only ever done it on the airbag and the last time I tried it was five months ago, so that was the first time I’ve ever tried it on snow. So it was a big stepping stone for me.”
It was an act of extraordinary bravery, and had it paid off would have been legendary. Her preferred event, slopestyle, is still to come, and the 1620 may get another outing, she said.
New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, the highest qualifier, won a fourth Olympic medal as she took silver, with Korean Seungeun Yu – whose previous best result was a second place in a World Cup event – completed the podium.
Muir’s event began in similar fashion to Brookes’ qualifying on Sunday night, with both athletes falling on their first runs and needing a miraculous second or third run to get back into contention.
21-year-old Muir looked excellent on the first half of her first run, the three sections of rails, but came unstuck on her penultimate jump – a double cork 1080 – and only scored 37.15, putting her in provisional 10th.
The same trick continued causing her problems throughout her second and third runs, although she improved markedly in the all-important final attempt to score 76.05.
But her face at the finish told its own story, and she was in tears as the result was confirmed: fourth by a mere four-tenths of a point.
Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud became a back-to-back Olympic champion – to the delight of a large Swiss contingent in Livigno – with China’s Eileen Gu and Canada’s Megan Oldham rounding out the podium.
The result is nonetheless an improvement on the Scot’s previous result at the Olympics, fifth in Beijing 2022, and she remains a contender in the Big Air competition later in the Games.
She was in tears as she was hugged and consoled by family after the competition, and kept her ski goggles on to speak to broadcasters.
She said afterwards: “I’m obviously a bit sad, a bit… not angry with myself, I’m not disappointed, but it’s just a tough place to be, fourth.
“It was tough when [the second jump] wasn’t working out for me, and I switched plans, and I’m proud that we did that, and I still put [a clean run] down, but it’s hard. I just wanted this a lot.”
