The three snowsport stars leading Team GB’s charge for new ground at Winter Olympics

As the clock ticks down to the start of the Winter Olympics expectations are high for Team GB’s 53-strong squad. The last Winter Olympics, a hazmat-suited, grim affair in Beijing, when Britain came away with just two medals from a target of up to seven, feels a world away from Milano-Cortina.

British medal contenders are dotted across a wide range of sports, from the ice rink in Milan to the death-defying sliding track in Cortina. But it’s a trio of young British women on the slopes of Livigno who are likely to steal the spotlight. Freestyle skiers and snowboarders Zoe Atkin, 23, Kirsty Muir, 21, and Mia Brookes, 19, are hot favourites for gold at the Livigno Snow Park.

All three are fresh from a hat-trick of titles - in SuperPipe, freeski slopestyle and snowboard slopestyle respectively - at January’s X Games in Colorado, snowsport’s premier competition outside the Olympic Games. Brookes and Muir also took home medals in their respective Big Air events, a bronze and silver, with Muir finishing just 0.66 points behind the winner.

The results made for Britain's most successful-ever X Games and put the nation in pole position to not only improve on but completely eclipse the two-medal haul from Beijing.

In that Games GB won no snowsport medals and the governing body had its funding slashed by UK Sport as a result of perceived underperformance. But that move appears premature; even on something of a shoestring budget compared to other nations, its athletes are punching well above their weight, and have serious momentum heading to Italy.

Between them, the young trio have four World Cup wins and another three podium finishes this season. Atkin is the reigning world champion and World Cup overall winner in freeski half-pipe, Brookes a former slopestyle world champion and now two-time X Games winner, and Muir – who missed a year of competition recovering from double surgery – is now a four-time X Games medallist.

Much has been made of the innate jeopardy and risk of all winter sports and while it’s true that anything can happen on the day, it would be a huge surprise if any missed out on a medal. Muir and Brookes represent Britain’s first two medal opportunities, with the pair in line to compete in finals on day three. It could be a Magic Monday for GB, and the starting point for a golden Games.

Muir toldThe Independent ahead of this season of her hopes that this generation’s successes will expand the reach of what is still a niche sport, in a country lacking winter sports infrastructure. “From being not really a snow-dominated country or one with much snow at all, it’s understandable that we’ve got a lot fewer viewers, but I’m hoping that that can change,” she said.

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“I think having Mia, Zoe, me, we all have a really good shot to push it to a bigger audience and show people what we’re doing. I think people don’t watch it because they don’t think there’s anyone from the UK doing it, but we are doing it. It’d be cool for people to see.”

Atkin told The Independent she wants the increased prominence of British athletes on the world stage to encourage young viewers to try snowsport too. “When I was growing up there weren’t a ton of girls doing it,” the 23-year-old said.

“I don’t necessarily want to cast myself into the position as a role model, but I do love to see all the girls coming up. I do hope in a way that I can inspire them, whether that be learning a certain trick or more broadly in pushing your limits and overcoming that fear and build your confidence.”

GB Snowsport have further medal chances in snowboard cross, with another representative of British excellence, 30-year-old Charlotte Bankes, leading the charge after switching to Great Britain in 2018 after previously featuring at two Games for France.

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The three-time Olympian is well placed to win a medal which has so far eluded her, either in the individual event - in which she has a win and a podium this season - or mixed team with Huw Nightingale - which the pair won in Bankes’ first race back from two collarbone surgeries. “It’s really cool to see all the success that Mia and Kirsty and Charlotte have been having – super cool to be part of,” said Atkin.

While the athletes have little time to interact outside major championships, Atkin said it’s “inspiring” when they do come together, and there is a sense of success breeding further success.

Even while competing against teams with superior budgets GB has an edge. Atkin, who has a Chinese-Malaysian mother and British father, holds dual British and US citizenship, having been born and raised in the US. But the decision to represent GB – despite its lack of winter sports culture and infrastructure, particularly compared to that of the huge and extensively funded American team – was an easy one for her.

She described representing Britain as “an honour” and added: “The team is very supportive, it’s a smaller environment. I think it really allows athletes to thrive – me, Kirsty, Mia, all these amazing talents that are coming up. It’s cool to be a part of that smaller community and to be in a space where it’s a newer, exciting sport for people. Maybe people have never heard of it before, it’s their first time watching, so that’s exciting for me to reach that audience and grow the sport.”

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While British success inevitably attracts attention, the very nature of snowsport – high-stakes, physically spectacular and almost effortlessly cool – feels primed to capture a new audience. These young athletes could become the poster girls of this year’s Games. Muir, who was GB’s youngest competitor in Beijing, and Atkin, who has been on the World Cup circuit since the age of 15, are older and wiser with more experience behind them, while Brookes was too young to make the cut in 2022.

It isn’t just Britain’s youngsters who are blazing a trail towards Milano-Cortina. Across the board GB has one of the best squads of any non-Alpine nation, and appears to have peaked at exactly the right moment. UK Sport’s director of performance and people, Kate Baker, said before the Olympics that GB is in the “strongest position we have ever been in going into a Winter Games from a world championship perspective,” with 21 medals, including eight golds across this cycle.

Chief among those is skeleton, in which Britain looks poised to continue its recent - and somewhat unlikely - dominance: Matt Weston is the reigning world champion and recent World Cup overall winner, while teammate Marcus Wyatt finished third overall and ensured GB completed a clean sweep of the World Cup races. Then there’s Team Mouat, the men’s curling squad who took silver in Beijing, who Baker described as “rockstars”, and Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who have established Britain as a force in ice dance for the first time since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean.

Snowsport medals early in the fortnight could be the catalyst for a gold rush across the remainder of the Olympics. Eve Muirhead, Olympic champion in Beijing and now Team GB’s chef de mission, told media before the Games: “We have the capability to disrupt the norm at the Winter Games, and we all know we're an emerging winter nation.” Nowhere has that been more obvious than in park and pipe, and if the last few months are anything to go by, GB’s young snowsport stars could soon be reaping the biggest of rewards.