- Mia Brookes discloses her hopes for a gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics
- Earlier, she became the youngest world champion in the history of snowboarding
Born in Cheshire, turned 18 last month and already a record-breaking world champion. This teenage sporting sensation, though, is not famous for throwing darts at a board, but for being on a board throwing herself around mountains.
‘I am pretty bad at darts myself, so I will leave that to him!’ laughs Mia Brookes, born in Sandbach on January 19, 2007, two days before Warrington’s Luke Littler. ‘It’s really impressive what he has done and it’s really cool that we are both from Cheshire and both 18. It’s sick to be putting Cheshire on the map.’
Like Littler, snowboarder Brookes is the youngest-ever world champion in her respective sport, winning slopestyle gold aged 16 in 2023. That led to her being named BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, the same award claimed by Littler in December.
Brookes is not yet a household name like her darting counterpart. But that could all change in 12 months’ time as she bids to become the first Briton to win a snowboarding gold medal at the Winter Olympics. With exactly one year to go until Milan Cortina 2026, Brookes is the current world No 1 in both her events of slopestyle and big air.
‘It’s kind of crazy that all of this has happened to me at such a young age,’ she tells Mail Sport from Aspen, USA, where she recently secured two podium places in the prestigious X Games.
‘The Olympics is definitely in the back of my mind and, as we are getting closer, it’s coming to the forefront. I am not putting too much pressure on myself for it. Whatever happens, I will just be hyped to be there with all my friends.
‘But obviously I would like to go there and win. To be able to say I have got an Olympic gold would be really insane.’
Brookes was just 18 months old when she first set foot on a snowboard at Kidsgrove Ski Centre in Stoke, where her grandfather David and grandmother Tina both worked. ‘My grandad died a long time ago, but my granny is still around and still loving it,’ she says. ‘She has never watched me compete live, but she is planning to come out to the Olympics, which will be really sweet.’
Brookes’ parents, Nigel and Vicky, are also snowsport enthusiasts and they took her to Montchavin, France, when she was only eight weeks old, giving her a first taste of the slopes strapped to their chest in a papoose. The family were fondly described by friends as ‘three hippies in a motorhome’ as they spent school holidays at ski resorts around Europe.
‘The motorhome was like a second home to me,’ recalls Brookes, who honed her skills in the UK at Chill Factore in Manchester. ‘I loved being in the mountains and riding around with my mum and dad.
‘We were never setting out to try and get to this level, we just loved snowboarding as a family and it has led me to where I am now.’
Brookes’ earliest memory of seeing the sport on TV was as a seven-year-old in 2014, when Jenny Jones became the first Briton to win an Olympic snowboarding medal with a slopestyle bronze in Sochi.
‘I remember watching her run and being like, “That is so cool”,’ she says. ‘I never had any intention of going myself. I just thought it was really, really sick.’
It soon became clear, though, that Brookes was destined to follow in Jones’ footsteps. She was just 10 when she was spotted by GB Snowsport and competed at the British Championships a year later. However, Brookes’ rapid rise to the top was temporarily halted in 2021, when she was knocked out in a serious crash on the slopes, causing her to stay off her snowboard for three months while she recovered from severe headaches.
‘I was airlifted off the snow and was unconscious for maybe 40 minutes,’ she says. ‘I was really lucky it was just concussion and I had no other injuries. But it was pretty difficult to come back from. Three months without snowboarding was pretty empty.
‘There were a few little mental barriers that I had to get through, just starting to ride jumps again. But I was soon back to normal and it felt like I had never been away.’
Brookes was too young to qualify for the last Olympics in Beijing in 2022, turning 15 just 19 days after the cut-off period. A year later, though, she won that gold at the World Championships, becoming the first woman to land a Cab 1440 double grab – a trick involving four full rotations in the air while grabbing the board twice.
This season, Brookes has already won three World Cup events – one in slopestyle and two in big air – as she prepares for the defence of her world title defence in St. Moritz, Switzerland next month. Such is her relentless winter schedule, she has not yet had time to celebrate her 18th birthday, although she has a belated present for herself in mind.
‘I am probably going to go and get a tattoo in LA,’ she says. ‘I am not sure what it will be yet, I am still deciding. But I won’t be getting the Olympic rings tattooed next year. That’s too cliched!’
Away from the slopes, Brookes is a keen skateboarder and surfer and her taste in music mirrors her thrill-seeking hobbies.
‘I like heavy metal, like Metallica and Megadeth,’ she adds. ‘I listen to that before competitions to get myself psyched up. I also really like playing the electric guitar. I am pretty good.’
British fans will hope Brookes is in tune come the Olympics next year.
