Winter Olympics 2026: Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale win snowboard cross gold

Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the snowboard cross mixed team gold medal, securing Team GB’s first Winter Olympic title on snow.

The British duo made up for the heartbreak in their individual competitions with a surprising performance, adding Olympic gold to the World Championship title they won in 2023.

It is the first time Britain has won two gold medals at one Winter Olympics.

Great Britain’s only Olympic medals on snow were bronze medals for snowboarder Jenny Jones in 2014 and for freestyle skier Izzy Atkin and snowboarder Billy Morgan four years later.

In a men’s first race event, Nightingale crossed the line in second place behind France’s Loan Bozzolo, setting up Bankes perfectly and using her exceptional speed on the board to take the lead, clearing Italy’s Michela Moioli by 0.43 seconds to the line.

In this event, Moioli and Lorenzo Sommariva won the second silver medal in a row, while Loan Bozzolo and Lea Casta from France took bronze.

Bankes, a former individual world champion and two-time overall World Cup champion, was disappointed when she exited the women’s event in the quarter-finals on Friday, just as she was in Beijing four years ago, despite being widely tipped to medal.

Similarly, while Nightingale asked for much more from herself after exiting the men’s competition in the round of 16, she found another level alongside Bankes to deliver arguably her best race.