The Times - UK (2022-02-03)

Bankes won gold

at the 2021 World

Championships

F

rom a period of British

history in which trade with

Europe has been at the

forefront of minds, Charlotte

Bankes may be the nation’s

best bit of business. At the 2018

Olympics in Pyeongchang, Bankes

reached the semi-finals of the

women’s snowboard cross under the

French flag. Four years later, she is

Team GB’s firmest medal hope.

Bankes was born in Hemel

Hempstead. When she was four, her

parents, Mark and Kate, moved the

family to L’Argentière-la-Bessée in

the Alps. Having taken up skiing at

two, she changed to snowboarding to

emulate her brothers, William and

Thomas — the former would go on to

compete for France, the latter for

Britain.

Without the switch of allegiance,

Bankes would have given up by now.

She has suffered with a long-term hip

problem since she fractured her pelvis

in 2011 and was frustrated by a lack of

progress and a lack of support in the

French system. “I contacted [GB

Snowsport] by email first and then we

standings with five

podium finishes from

six events: victories in

Montafon and

Krasnoyarsk (twice), a second

in Beijing and third place at

Cortina d’Ampezzo.

It is an impressive run of

results in an event where chaos

can reign. Six athletes come out of

the gates and travel at about

50mph, snowboarding down a

narrow, twisting track with

jumps, trying to avoid collisions

and cross the line first. A men’s semi-

final in Pyeongchang was an example

of the jeopardy: five of the six racers

were wiped out, with Spain’s Regino

Hernández left to finish first.

Hernández would go on to win

bronze in the final ahead of three

riders who hit the deck; the

Frenchman Pierre Vaultier, who took

gold, had been in a three-man crash

in his semi-final, getting up to finish

in third and qualify for the final.

For Bankes, the start has been a

historical weakness. Often by

necessity she is a decent chaser,

generating speed on the banked turns.

“I am starting a bit more in the pack,

which is helping, and then it is really

Sport

How switch rescued Bankes’ career

had a meeting,” Bankes, 26, says.

“From that it came pretty quickly that

I was not happy in the system I was in

and from the start they were willing

to support me and help me through

that.

“It was a tough couple of months

going through the process of transfer

but I had also the support from GB

Snowsport and my dad so I could

focus on my performance and not on

all the details.

“I was getting results and I wasn’t

training properly. So I knew that if I

could train properly and put in all

that work, it could pay off.”

For Bankes, a change was better

than a rest. Through GB

Snowsport, she saw a

Harley Street

specialist and a

physiotherapist.

Her newly

strengthened

hip is not

perfect but she

is able to train fully. She

won silver at the World

Championships in 2019

before taking gold two years

later, becoming the first

British woman to be world

champion in a winter sport

for 85 years. She leads

this season’s World Cup

working on using my strong points —

the carving and basing as well,” she

says. “I have got that instinct of

knowing where to go. I am managing

to use that quite well. It is just giving

it my all and that’s helping.

“Everything is coming together and

being a good all-round snowboarder

is helping. It’s that balance and

strength on the board. I’ve managed

to build up my strength physically

and I can make the most of my

snowboard and how I ride it.”

Eva Samkova, the 2014 Olympic

champion from the Czech Republic, is

injured, but other medal threats

remain. Bankes cites Michela Moioli,

the 2018 champion from Italy who

lost to the Briton by 0.08 seconds at

last year’s World Championships,

Belle Brockhoff of Australia and the

American Lindsey Jacobellis as the

main rivals.

Victory would represent a first

Olympic gold for Team GB in

snowboarding, Jenny Jones

(slopestyle, 2014) and Billy Morgan

(big air, 2018) having won bronze at

the past two Games. As if to hammer

home Bankes’s fidelity to the nation

of her birth, it would be Yorkshire Tea

what won it.

“I have tea before I go on the

slopes,” Bankes says. “I won’t count

the number of cups of tea I have a

day. I will always have my flask up on

the hill. Between runs, I will have a

cup of tea and a flapjack and I will be

all good.”

Snowboarder once

represented France but

is now Britain’s firmest

medal hope in Beijing,

writes Elgan Alderman

T

he Olympic

Games haven’t

officially

started but the

sport couldn’t

wait to get going

nonetheless. Or, to put it

bluntly, there is so much

curling lined up for

these Winter Olympics

that they had to crack

on with it two days

before the opening

ceremony fireworks or

any lighting of the flame

(Owen Slot writes).

So there is a good two

weeks-plus of this to run

and, though it remains

to be seen whether the

nation is going to

become enraptured with

Bruce Mouat and Jen

Dodds the way they have

been with other curlers

in Olympics past, the

Scottish pair certainly

opened their Games in a

manner that suggested

they may have TV

viewers switching on at

strange times to

reacquaint themselves

with a sport that, for

four years, they’d mostly

forgotten about.

Mouat and Dodds

were both making their

Olympic debut, a

challenge that they were

maybe helped through

when the evening’s sport

was opened by a troupe

of Chinese bagpipers in

kilts belting out Scotland

the Brave.

The bagpipes are a

curling tradition. Mouat

and Dodds responded

with an absorbing, tense

9-5 victory over the

Swedish team that

remained in the balance

until the last stone of the

match. Their second

game, in the round-

robin stage, is in the

early hours, when they

meet the Canadian pair,

the male half of whom is

a reigning Olympic

champion. At least they

can have confidence

after their opener last

night; they feel that they

are already building

momentum.

They were both partly

inspired by the fact that

they were opening the

account for the British

team here in Beijing.

“Both of us wanted to

get Great Britain off to a

good start,” Mouat said.

They were also

inspired by the sense of

history in this stadium,

the Icecube, which

to us,” Mouat said.

“Hopefully we

can keep it

going.”

Indeed

Adlington

won her

double gold in

this venue 14

years ago. As it

happens, Mouat

and Dodds are

world champions in the

mixed doubles and they

are not only therefore

strong medal hopes for

this event, but they will

be back thereafter for

another crack at the

podium in the men’s and

women’s. We may get to

know them well.

Mouat is tipped to do

well as skip for the men’s

team in a fortnight’s

time. He is a calm

presence and a good foil

for Dodds, though she

provided the highlight of

their victory with a final

stone in the third end

that made it a three-

point end. The Swedes

did have a chance to

push it to sudden death

but Mouat and Dodds

survived, and feel they

can only get stronger.

“There was a wee bit

of nerves but we soon

settled down,” Dodds

said. “Once we got

into our flow, it just

felt like another

game of curling. We

are trying to relax into

this — we are new to it.”

Welcome to Beijing 2022,

T2 cover

British duo

brush off

nerves to

secure win

Champion ‘scared’ of snow

The 31-year-old, who won the

inaugural Olympic women’s

slopestyle gold in 2014 and defended

her title in 2018, said the course was

“very firm”.

“I think the majority of it is

artificial snow, so it’s not ideal,” she

said. “You definitely don’t want to

fall. It feels like pretty bulletproof

ice.” Anderson has suffered a

catalogue of serious injuries in her

career, including a ruptured spleen.

“With the snow condition it made

me feel a bit more scared,” she said.

“I think it’s going to get rowed in

and start to ride better and better.”

staged the swimming at

the Summer Olympics

in 2008. “To be in the

same arena as all those

amazing athletes before,

like [Michael] Phelps

and [Rebecca]

Adlington, means a lot

Mouat and Dodds in action

on their Olympic debut,

main picture, and, right,

celebrating victory

ANDREW MILLIGAN/PA

The Beijing Olympics snowboard

slopestyle course is like “bulletproof

ice”, the two-times champion Jamie

Anderson said yesterday, adding

that she was “scared” when riding

on the artificial snow.

The Games, which officially begin

tomorrow, are taking place mostly

on man-made snow because they

are being held in one of the driest

parts of China. America’s

Anderson got her first

taste of the course

yesterday in Zhangjiakou,

about 180 kilometres (110

miles) northwest of Beijing.

Winter Olympics

1 day to go

the times | Thursday February 3 2022 61