‘When I stood at the top of the run, I felt something in the air,” says 16-year-old Mia Brookes, her face etched with joy and awe as she relieves the dizzying trick that made her the youngest world champion in snowboarding history this year. “I knew it was going to happen. It was really weird.”
Until last month no female snowboarder had ever attempted a Cab 1440 double grab in competition. Little wonder. The trick is so risky it should carry an X-certificate. But on a witchy day in Bakuriani, Georgia, something magical was brewing. On her second run, with the slopestyle world championship on the line, the schoolgirl from Sandbach in Cheshire flew backwards off a ramp, twisted her body through four rotations while also grabbing her board twice, and landed smoothly and serenely.
