Charlotte Bankes & Huw Nightingale: GB pair win 'unbelievable' gold after early disappointment
- Published
Great Britain's Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale win snowboard cross mixed team gold
Charlotte Bankes soothed her "raw" pain at losing her world title in the best possible way - with a new gold medal.
Just 24 hours after crashing out of her individual snowboard cross title defence, she made history with Huw Nightingale in the mixed team event at the World Championships in Georgia.
It's the nation's first-ever title in the mixed team discipline which debuted at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
"I can't quite believe it," Bankes, 27, said.
"Yesterday is still raw but I'm really happy to bounce back today," she told BBC Sport:
Nightingale, 21, who is making his debut at the World Championships, was also back from his own "big disappointment" after failing to qualify for the men's finals.
But he placed the British pair just 0.07 seconds off the lead with an impressive first run in Thursday's final.
Bankes then dominated the women's field, crossing the line first to finish 0.88 seconds ahead of Austria's Jakob Dusek and Pia Zerkhold, while France came third.
"It's pretty amazing and unbelievable, as no-one expected the result," Nightingale told BBC Sport.
"We just went out there and gave our best. There was no pressure, which was a big factor."
He and Bankes had an earlier-than-expected chance at redemption after their individual disappointment when the mixed team event was moved from Saturday to Thursday because of predicted poor weather conditions.
Bankes, who became Britain's first snowboard world champion when she won individual gold in 2021, now has another medal to add to her two golds and a bronze from the World Cup circuit this season.
And she's not stopping there.
"We're looking forward to a big end to the season," she said.
The snowboard cross season concludes in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada on 24-26 March.
Bankes and Nightingale's win follows 16-year-old Mia Brookes' historic snowboard slopestyle victory on Monday.
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