Team GB’s wait for a first medal of the 2026 Winter Olympics is set to drag on after 19-year-old Mia Brookes fell agonisingly short of silverware in big air snowboarding.
Brookes is the youngest-ever snowboarding world champion and left it all on the slopes as she pushed to mark her Olympic debut with a top-three finish.
The Cheshire native started her final run of the slopestyle final sitting third in the rankings and attempted an audacious backside 1620, which she had never before tried on snow, in a last-ditch attempt to unseat eventual gold medallist Kokomo Murase.
While she completed the required four-and-a-half turns, she failed to stick the landing and slipped to fourth place.
Speaking afterwards, Brookes said she was proud to have aimed so high with her final run: “Obviously I'm bummed I couldn't land that last trick. It's a really special trick and, for women's snowboarding, if I'd landed that it would have been insane.
"I wasn't planning on it and I didn't want to do it at all. But I think sometimes you've got to just grit your teeth and get it done. I'm just stoked I tried it and I'm not lying in a hospital bed."
Brookes, who will return to action next week in the slopestyle event, was not the only Team GB hopeful to miss out on a medal on Monday - far from it.
Elsewhere in snowsports, slopestyle skier Kirsty Muir fell short of the top three by an agonising 0.41 points after falling on her final run.
"I put it out there on every run,” she said. “I struggled to accept how close it was, but I know I've got more in me."
There was heartbreak in curling, too, as mixed doubles team Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds fell to a shock semi-final defeat by Sweden.
After dominating the round-robin phase, winning eight out of nine matches - including against Sweden.
Mouat and Dodds’ defeat is a worrying parallel of their fortunes on Olympic debut at Beijing 2022, when they were knocked out by Norway at the same stage.
They fell short of a bronze medal in China, losing the third-place final to Sweden, but will have the opportunity to right that wrong on Tuesday afternoon as they face defending champions Italy.
Speaking to BBC Sport post-game, Mouat said he was disappointed with his performance on the day: "We're really gutted. We've had such a good week and it was quite exciting for us to go into this game feeling the way we were.
"But to come out and not even play close to the way we wanted to is hard to put into words really. They were the better team today."
Ellia Smeding appeared in the women’s 1000m speed skating final earlier in the afternoon, but only managed an eleventh-place finish as Dutch pair Jutta Leerdam and Femke Kok both set Olympic records en route to a one-two finish.
