Cold gold! Britain wins its first Olympics title on snow
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LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — Move over Torvill and Dean. Britain has a great, new Winter Olympics pairing.
Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale won the first gold medal on snow in the island country’s 102-year history at the Winter Games after crossing the line in front Sunday in the wild sport of mixed snowboardcross.
This “Cold Gold” also gave Britain multiple titles at the same Games for the first time — and the news kept getting better. Later in the day, Matt Weston won his second gold in three days in skeleton, this time in the sport’s mixed event.
Britain’s most famous Winter athletes to this point: possibly Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, the ice-dancing due who captivated the world by skating to “Bolero” and captured a gold medal in 1984 and bronze in 1994.
Now, Britain has “Bankes and Nightingale.” How will they celebrate?
“Sadly, I like to drink a bit too much, so there might be quite a big celebration,” Nightingale said.
In mixed snowboardcross, the first set of riders go down the mountain four-wide, while the second set waits at the top of the hill in something resembling a relay race. Whichever team crosses the line first in the four-team final gets gold.
There are three rounds of elimination racing. Fittingly, the British came into the final as the underdog — seeded 13th out of the 16 teams that qualified.
There were no real signs this was coming. Bankes finished 13th in the women’s event and Nightingale 26th in the men’s event last week. But everything came together on a sunny day in Livigno that will be part of history back in the skiers’ hometowns in England, which typically only sees smatterings of snow about 14 days a year.
“We regrouped as a team and saw our families,” Bankes said. “That was super important for us to be able to come out today and perform. My coach said, ‘Go out there and have fun, keep the smile on your face.’”
They smiled all the way to the end of “God Save the King” — the first time the British national anthem has played during a medals ceremony at a ski, snowboard or biathlon course at the Olympics.
Mixed snowboardcross came into the Olympics four years ago, and America’s Lindsey Jacobellis teamed with Nick Baumgartner to win gold a few days after Jacobellis broke through with her first title in the women’s event.
Now another breakthrough. Between snowboardcross and the Weston wins, Britain now has 16 gold medals over its century-plus of Winter Games history.
“It’s unbelievable,” Nightingale said. “GB on a whole is doing great on the snowboard side. … We want to keep it going and inspire little kids to do it as well, and maybe one day they can get a gold medal.”
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics