Mia Brookes went down fighting as she narrowly missed out on Great Britain’s first medal of the Milan and Cortina Winter Olympics in the women’s snowboard Big Air at Livigno Snow Park.
Starting her last of three runs in third place, Brookes went for broke and came agonisingly close to becoming the first female athlete to land a backside 1620 in competition.
But Brookes slightly over-rotated and was penalised for her landing, meaning she slipped a position behind winner Kokomo Murase of Japan, New Zealander Zio Sadowski Synnott and Seungeun Yu of South Korea.
It marked another near-miss on a day that had promised so much for Team GB, with Kirsty Muir earlier also taking fourth place in the women’s ski slopestyle final.
With the cumulative score of the two best of three runs counting, Brookes had gone into her final attempt in third place behind Yu of South Korea and Japan’s Murase.
Her brave attempt might well have been enough to lift her onto the top of the podium, but instead she is left to refocus on her favourite event, the snowboard slopestyle, later next week.
Mouat and Dodds lose but can still win Bronze
Dreams of an Olympic gold medal for Bruce Mouat and Jennifer Dodds in the curling mixed doubles were ended as they were beaten 9-3 by Sweden in Monday’s semifinal.
The British pair had topped the round-robin stage and beat Sweden 7-4 on Friday, but their winning touch deserted them in Cortina.
While Great Britain prevailed in the first end 1-0, the Swedish duo of Rasmus and Isabella Wranaa gathered momentum in taking the next two before Mouat and Dodds scored a point in the fourth to leave the match poised at 3-2 at the halfway stage.
The British pair were back on level terms after the fifth end, but Sweden scored five points in the sixth to put victory within their grasp and a final point in the seventh end sealed victory, with the teams shaking hands.
Mouat and Dodds will now face Italy on Tuesday afternoon in the bronze medal match, with the 2022 Olympic champions beaten by the United States in their semifinal.
Dodds said: “I think we’re just both disappointed we didn’t play like we have played all week. In an Olympic semifinal you can’t do that and the Swedes capitalised on our mistakes and we got punished for it tonight.
“Probably the common theme was we were always throwing heavy, for example I was bouncing off with my first shot and they got another one in there which kind of put us on the back foot.”
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Of the crucial sixth end, Mouat said: “The theme was just heavy.
“We missed a lot of things that either went through the rings or missed the shots we were aiming for, so we just needed to try to regroup after that and get our two or three in the next end.
“It was just a bad end to have in an Olympic semifinal.”
The British duo finished fourth in Beijing in 2022, when they were beaten by another Swedish pair in the bronze match.
