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High in the Italian Alps, where the thin air and oxygen deprivation often does strange things to the brain, British accents have started whispering about the possibility of Magic Monday – and Team GB winning three medals in one day at these Winter Olympics.
And the craziest thing of all? It’s not entirely out of the question.
Late on Sunday evening, Mia Brookes, the 19-year-old British snowboarding superstar, dug herself out of a hole with the help of Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera and Judas Priest to qualify third for the Big Air final on Monday.
Before then, Team GB’s mixed curling team of Bruce Mouat and Jen Dodds will play in their semi-final in the afternoon, knowing they are odds‑on favourites with the bookies having lost just one game, against Switzerland, in the group stages. Win their last-four encounter and they will guarantee a medal.
Then there is the 21-year-old Kirsty Muir, who goes into the freeski slopestyle final full of confidence, having also come third in qualifying. The bookies make her third favourite for gold too, behind only the Swiss skier Mathilde Gremaud and the Chinese star Eileen Gu.
Are three Team GB medals likely? No. But can you rule it out? Also no.
Sunday night, though, was all about Brookes in the Big Air. It is an event not for the fainthearted, given that it requires snowboarders to fly down a 150‑feet high ramp before launching off a ramp, and trying to spin as much as possible before nailing the landing.
And Brookes’s Winter Olympics campaign could not have got off to a worse start as she over-rotated on her first run and ended up sliding towards Livigno town centre on her backside.
Her score of 29.75 points left her 24th out of 29 competitors. And to add to the jeopardy, she knew that only the top two scores from a competitor’s three runs are counted. It meant she needed to score big on her second and third run to be one of the 12 athletes to make the final.
The pressure was on. Brookes delivered. First she nailed a backside 1260 melon, with three‑and‑a‑half full rotations while spinning towards her back in the air. That scored 89 points, second highest of the night. She was still in 22nd place going into her final attempt. This time she chose a Cab 1080 stalefish, a safer jump. That scored 78, leaving her with a total of 167, and putting her third overall.
“That third one was special to land,” she said. “You’re in the air, thinking about it in the back of your mind, spinning: like, oh, my God, I’ve got to land this. But as much as I hate it in the moment, it’s moments like that that I just love.
“Because when you land, it’s like the best feeling on the planet. It’s insane.”
What was especially impressive was that she had conquered her nerves after falling on her first attempt. “After that first run, I was so nervous. But I just had to take my time at the top, not rush into anything. I listened to Metallica. Megadeth. Pantera, Judas Priest, stuff like that.
“It came out of me in an athlete way,” she said when asked about her mindset. “I was just keeping cool under the pressure and not making any rash decisions or rushing anything. Every minute was awesome, but definitely quite scary.”
Her proud parents, Nigel and Vicky, were watching on. Brookes learnt to snowboard when the two of them, who work as a mechanic and a hairdresser, drove around Europe in a camper van. They are staying in the camper van here in Livigno too, incidentally, to save money.
It all adds to Brookes’s charm. “Yeah, they’re actually in the camper, just staying down the road,” she said. “So yeah, they came and watched the night. So yeah, it’s special to do that in my family.”
Asked about the possibility of Magic Monday, Brookes smiled as she considered the possibility. “It’d just be great to be a part of that, wouldn’t it? I’ve grown up with Kirsty. We’ve known each other since we were younger. So to go into an Olympic final on the same day as her for Great Britain is really special.”
It could get even more special still.
