From scandal-hit Russian figure skaters to the thousands of officials and media who faced a daily assault on their nasal passages, the Covid-stricken Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics proved a Games many wished to forget.
Throw in a grim medal haul for Great Britain – salvaged only by double curling glory in the Games’ final days – and it was not difficult to regard the distant Milan-Cortina Games in 2026 as an eminently more appealing prospect.
One hundred days out from a return to the pinnacle of winter sports, the prospect of more daily testing misery has gone and with it the gloom that hung over a team who – curlers excepted – were never able to reach their potential in such uniquely-difficult circumstances.
Chief among those to leave the Chinese capital frustrated was Charlotte Bankes, the snowboard-cross hopeful who had swept into the Games as world champion and the world ranking leader, but whose medal hopes were dashed in a quarter-final elimination.
It was not quite the narrative Bankes had intended when she controversially left the French team after the 2018 Games and linked up with Great Britain, shrugging off the negative headlines in the place she still calls home and instantly installing her new team with a ready-made gold medal prospect.
If any disappointment still lingers for the 30-year-old, it has been heightened by an injury battle that has required two operations on her collar bone since she first sustained the injury in training prior to the final World Cup of the 2024/5 season.
“My injury hasn’t changed my goal or ambitions for the Games, it has refocused me completely on this one goal,” Bankes told the PA news agency.
“This injury does probably mean I won’t be ready for the start of the season but the goal is to be ready and competitive for January to use those World Cups to build until the Games.
“Beijing was tough for a lot of reasons and the environment we were in didn’t help. There were some small things I could have done better and unfortunately, I just didn’t manage to perform at my best.
“But we’re lucky in winter sports in that we can quickly switch back to the overall World Cup circuit and that does help you refocus and take a step back from bad results. I have no regrets about how things turned out, but the whole experience has driven me to do it better this time round.”
If Bankes’ missed opportunity in Beijing felt all the more painful for her new-found team, with scant few others capable of stepping into the breach, four years on the prospects for Team GB look immeasurably brighter, with a real chance of exceeding the record five winter medals achieved in both 2014 and 2018.
Besides curling and sliding, Bankes is joined on the slopes by two world champions in the form of teenage snowboard slopestyle star Mia Brookes – who has inherited Bankes’ Beijing mantle as arguably the team’s best gold medal prospect – and ski half-pipe star Zoe Atkin.
Bankes, however, has no intention of making way for the new generation just yet, insisting her switch to Team GB has prolonged her career in a way in which she would not have thought possible.
“Eight years ago I would not have believed that I’d still be competing now,” Bankes added. “Physically I didn’t think I would be able to continue that long and although I knew I had potential, I just wasn’t enjoying it.
“When I switched and found that potential and the ability to train to my best, that’s when I found the fun again.
“I just want the opportunity to give everything I’ve got. Mine is such an unpredictable sport but after everything I’ve been through, I feel like I’m ready to do that.”
