A sixteen year old girl who honed her craft at Chill Factore in Manchester and travelled around Europe in the family motorhome has become the youngest world champion in the history of snowboarding.
Mia Brookes won slopestyle gold in Georgia to become Britain’s first-ever world champion in the event.
She was born in Sandbach, Cheshire, and stepped on a snowboard as soon as she could walk.
Mia first tried the sport at 18 months old at Kidsgrove Ski Centre in Stoke.
She was encouraged by her parents Vicky and Nigel, who lived in Chamonix for five ski seasons.
“We would spend about six weeks on snow when Mia was little and she was soon snowboarding at our level with us and always loved the snow parks, the jumps and the rails,” Nigel told BBC Sport.
“I grew up almost in two places,” Mia said on the Outside and Active podcast. “It’s nice to have a European side to my life.”
She met GB coaches aged ten and was soon selected for the team’s development squad.
Mia ripped up the junior circuit, becoming junior world champion in Big Air and placing second in Slopestyle in early 2022.
After success on the junior circuit, Brookes stepped up to senior level this season, winning World Cup silver at the prestigious Laax event in January and being one of only eight riders to get an invitation to the X Games.
And on Monday she became a world champion in Georgia, landing the first Cab 1440 double grab – featuring four rotations of the body in the air while grabbing the board – in a women’s event to claim Britain’s maiden slopestyle gold.
Now she has her sights on the next Winter Olympics at Milan-Cortina in 2026, having been too young to compete last year in Beijing.
She told the BBC:
“I used the last Olympics as a tool to build up my tricks for the next one, so I took the positives out of missing out,” she said.
“All of my dreams have been coming true this year. I hope to win gold at X Games and the crystal globe [for the overall World Cup winner].
“That would be pretty insane.”
