Excessive within the Italian Alps, the place the skinny air and oxygen deprivation usually does unusual issues to the mind, British accents have began whispering about the opportunity of Magic Monday – and Group GB successful three medals in at some point at these Winter Olympics.
And the craziest factor of all? It’s not solely out of the query.
Late on Sunday night, Mia Brookes, the 19-year-old British snowboarding famous person, dug herself out of a gap with the assistance of Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera and Judas Priest to qualify third for the Large Air closing on Monday.
Earlier than then, Group GB’s combined curling group of Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds will play of their semi-final within the afternoon, realizing they’re odds‑on favourites with the bookies having misplaced only one recreation, towards Switzerland, within the group levels. Win their last-four encounter and they’re going to assure a medal.
Then there may be the 21-year-old Kirsty Muir, who goes into the freeski slopestyle closing filled with confidence, having additionally come third in qualifying. The bookies make her third favorite for gold too, behind solely the Swiss skier Mathilde Gremaud and the Chinese language star Eileen Gu.
Are three Group GB medals probably? No. However are you able to rule it out? Additionally no.
Sunday evening, although, was all about Brookes within the Large Air. It’s an occasion not for the fainthearted, on condition that it requires snowboarders to fly down a 150‑ft excessive ramp earlier than launching off a ramp, and attempting to spin as a lot as doable earlier than nailing the touchdown.
And Brookes’s Winter Olympics marketing campaign couldn’t have gotten off to a worse begin as she over-rotated on her first run and ended up sliding in the direction of Livigno city centre on her bottom.
Her rating of 29.75 factors left her twenty fourth out of 29 opponents. And so as to add to the jeopardy, she knew that solely the highest two scores from a competitor’s three runs are counted. It meant she wanted to attain massive on her second and third run to be one of many 12 athletes to make the ultimate.
The strain was on. Brookes delivered. First she nailed a bottom 1260 melon, with three‑and‑a‑half full rotations whereas spinning in the direction of her again within the air. That scored 89 factors, second highest of the evening. She was nonetheless in twenty second place going into her closing try. This time she selected a Cab 1080 stalefish, a safer soar. That scored 78, leaving her with a complete of 167, and placing her third total.
“That third one was particular to land,” she stated. “You’re within the air, fascinated about it at the back of your thoughts, spinning: like, oh, my God, I’ve acquired to land this. However as a lot as I hate it within the second, it’s moments like that that I simply love. As a result of while you land, it’s like one of the best feeling on the planet. It’s insane.” What was so spectacular was that she had conquered her nerves after falling on her first try.
“After that first run, I used to be so nervous. However I simply needed to take my time on the high, not rush into something. I listened to Metallica. Megadeth. Pantera, Judas Priest, stuff like that. It got here out of me in an athlete manner,” she stated when requested about her mindset. “I used to be simply conserving cool below the strain and never making any rash choices or speeding something. Each minute was superior, however positively fairly scary.”
Her proud mother and father, Nigel and Vicky, had been watching on. Brookes learnt to snowboard when the 2 of them, who work as a mechanic and a hairdresser, drove round Europe in a camper van. They’re staying within the camper van right here in Livigno too, by the way, to save cash.
In the meantime the opposite GB competitor, Maisie Hill, seemed on the brilliant facet after ending twenty ninth, having recovered from a lacerated liver to be right here. “I used to be really leaving hospital three years in the past at the moment after my damage,” she stated. “I used to be informed I’d by no means be capable of stroll once more and so to be right here now’s fairly cool.”
All of it provides to Brookes’s attraction. “Yeah, they’re really within the camper, simply staying down the highway,” she stated. “So yeah, they got here and watched the evening. So yeah, it’s particular to try this in my household.”Requested about the opportunity of Magic Monday, Brookes stated: “It’d simply be nice to be part of that, wouldn’t it? I’ve grown up with Kirsty. We’ve identified one another since we had been youthful. So to enter an Olympic closing on the identical day as her for Nice Britain is absolutely particular.”
It may get much more particular nonetheless.
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