GB's Bankes & Nightingale win historic snowboard cross gold

Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won snowboard cross mixed team gold to secure Team GB's first ever Winter Olympic title on snow.

After heartbreak in their individual events, the British pair made amends with an astonishing performance to add Olympic gold to the World Championship title they won in 2023.

It is the first time Great Britain have won two gold medals at a single Winter Olympics.

GB's only previous Olympic medals on snow were bronzes - for snowboarder Jenny Jones in 2014, and freestyle skier Izzy Atkin and snowboarder Billy Morgan four years later.

In an event that sees the men race first, Nightingale crossed the line in second place behind France's Loan Bozzolo to set up Bankes perfectly - and she used her remarkable speed on the board to take the lead and pip Italy's Michela Moioli to the line by 0.43 seconds.

It marked a second successive silver in this event for Moioli and Lorenzo Sommariva, while Bozzolo and Lea Casta took bronze.

Bankes, a former individual world champion and two-time overall World Cup winner, was left crestfallen on Friday when she exited the women's event in the quarter-finals, just as she did four years ago in Beijing, despite being widely tipped for a medal.

Similarly, Nightingale was left wanting much more from himself after exiting the men's competition in the round of 16, but found another level to produce arguably his best and most attacking racing alongside Bankes.

They had been seeded in 13th place for this event, despite winning the only mixed team World Cup of the season before the Games.

A large British contingent descended on Livigno Snow Park on Sunday to watch Bankes, 30, and 24-year-old Nightingale, with huge union jacks plastered with their images pinned to the front of the fan zone.

The red, white and blue-clad supporters' excitement was palpable as Bankes and Nightingale first won their opening quarter-final, and then their semi-final - by a much more comfortable margin - to ensure a shot at a medal.

And with only four teams in the final, their chances of a podium finish were high - though in the chaotic world of snowboard cross, where riders can hit speeds of 60mph and the slightest clip of a board can end all hope, nothing is guaranteed.

Bankes looked stunned as she crossed the finish line, coming to a stop at the barriers as the ecstatic Nightingale - who had faced an agonising wait at the bottom of the course - enveloped her in a hug, before sprinting over to the Team GB coaches who were waiting in the wings to congratulate their champions.

This marks Britain's second medal - and gold - of the Milan-Cortina Olympics after Matt Weston's victory in the men's skeleton.

Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale have now won both Olympic and World Championship gold in the mixed team event

For Bankes, competing at her fourth Winter Olympics, she finally has her hands on the medal that had evaded her for so long.

Widely seen as one of the best in the business, she has 26 World Cup gold medals to her name, and in 2021 became the first British snowboarder to win a World Championship title.

But until this day, the Olympics has never gone her way.

Born in Hemel Hempstead, she moved with her family to France as a four-year-old and represented the country at the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics, before changing allegiance to GB after the Pyeongchang Games.

Bankes then went into the Beijing Olympics four years later as perhaps Britain's best chance of a gold, but a crash in the quarter-finals put paid to her chances and left her devastated.

Her lead-up to these Games was far from ideal either.

In April last year she broke her collarbone, an injury she needed further surgery on in the summer - including a bone graft from her hip - after it was found not to be healing correctly.

She arrived here back to full fitness, yet was left feeling "lost" and incredibly emotional as she failed to find her best form in the women's individual race - before putting that disappointment behind her to secure the medal she had craved.