Charlotte Bankes: Snowboard cross world champion hoping to continue GB success with title defence
- Published
Charlotte Bankes exited the 2022 Olympic snowboard cross competition in the quarter-finals
The Winter Olympics maybe came a year too early for Great Britain.
Twelve months ago, despite a target of three to seven medals, Team GB were left to "lick their wounds" after a Beijing Games that had promised so much success and yet fell short on delivery, just two curling medals - won on the last two days of competition - to show for an Olympics of upsets and near-misses.
But much can happen in a year and this season has seen astounding success for Britain's athletes on snow and ice.
History has been rewritten in every direction you look, with GB medalling in every World Cup snow sport discipline it competes in, adding to overall World Cup medals in bobsleigh and skeleton and newly-crowned world champions in snowboard slopestyle and Para-skiing.
Such exceptional performances across the winter sport board has created somewhat of a feel-good factor around the wider GB team, and Charlotte Bankes is certainly looking to add to that when she starts the defence of her snowboard cross World Championship title on Wednesday.
"I think it just pushes us all further but also brings us together as a team, and I'd say it nearly takes a bit of pressure off because other people are performing," Bankes told BBC Sport.
"Unfortunately nobody managed to make it count for the Olympics, but we showed a lot better results on the World Cup circuit and I think that this year is just building on that."
Bankes had gone into the Olympics as a hot favourite for gold, a World Championship title and four World Cup wins for GB already under her belt after her 2018 defection from representing France.
She had earned five World Cup podium finishes from six races so far that season, but a rare blip arrived at the worst time - high up in the mountains of Zhangjiakou, in the quarter-finals of the Beijing Games.
"It was a massive disappointment," said the 27-year-old. "But it's also how boardercross goes, and that's our sport. It can't always work out and you can't make one single error in a run.
"I was straight back into it in the World Cup to just try and end the season on a high, but afterwards I just had to digest what happened, and the answer is I did a great season apart from the Olympics."
'You go for the win or nothing'
Bankes won snowboard cross World Championship gold in 2021
In 2021, in a season plagued by Covid-19 cancellations and changing locations, Bankes made history as the first Briton to win a world title on a snowboard, beating then Olympic and world champions en route to gold.
It was a win she says she didn't expect, though "it didn't come out of nowhere".
Two years on, as there was at the Olympics, there is more expectation even if not from herself. With a target on her back as the defending champion, Bankes travels to the next edition of the World Championships in Georgia in fine form, having won two golds and a bronze medal on the World Cup circuit so far this season.
"We've just tried to up the level even more and I've had a decent start to the season," she said.
"Not as smooth as I would have hoped. I wasn't able to start the first one, I was ill, but since then I've been on the podium and kept really working on the riding and trying to up the level all the time, but also just keep it constant."
Bankes, who will also compete in the team event with Huw Nightingale, will defend her title in Bakuriani on Wednesday, with the snowboard cross finals being shown live on the BBC (from 08:45 GMT).
But she is putting no more pressure on her shoulders than she would for any other competition, confident in the knowledge that she has done it all before.
"I know that I'm going in as defending world champion, but I think also I just need to take it as I've managed to win that medal and I've got it now, and I'm just going to try and do my best for these ones," she said.
"We'll see the result at the end, but I'm going to try and really focus on my snowboarding and what I need to do rather than on the result."
She added: "I think there is added pressure [at the World Championship] and you know that you have to perform on the day, but you can maybe take a bit more risk because it doesn't count for the overall. You go for the win or nothing.
"I think I want to take that approach to it and just give it my all."
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