Four-time Olympian Charlotte Bankes and newcomer Huw Nightingale impressed Livigno when they streaked through the snowboard cross course to win the Olympic title in the mixed team event — Great Britain's first Olympic snowboarding medal. Bankes made an incredible pass in the big final to edge ahead of French Lea Casta. Casta was unable to hold second. Italy's Michela Moioli pulled ahead of her to take silver with Lorenzo Sommariva. Casta and teammate Loan Bozzolo earned bronze.
"I’m happy with my riding all day. I found it again, which I’ve been struggling with for the last week here," Bankes said. "At last I found some speed and made it count. I really used my carving, the drafting, made the right choices and that’s where it pays off."
"It’s unbelievable. GB on a whole is doing great on the snowboard side," Nightingale said of winning Great Britain's first Olympic snowboarding medal.
"I did my best in the run. I knew that the best solution was to give a big gap to the second rider," Bozzolo said of his strategy of giving Casta as big of a lead as possible. "This track is flat at the end, [Casta] was drafted from the second last turn. I knew it was impossible to be first, because Charlotte and Michela are strong at the finish line. This was the best solution for today."
The bronze in this event ties Moioli, who has four Olympic medals, for the most decorated snowboarder in Olympic history. She's tied with Austrian Benjamin Karl (parallel giant slalom) and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (slopestyle/big air) of New Zealand.
"I like struggling sometimes. I like starting from the back," Moioli said of catching up to Casta in the big final. "Something came into my mind and I just tried to take as much speed as I could."
"We are happy, the Olympics are over [for us], we took home something beautiful," Moioli said.
The fourth team in the big final, Australia's Josie Baff and Adam Lambert, finished in 4th. Lambert went down in the men's race after making contact with Sommariva, resulting in a 4.48-second time penalty that Baff couldn't overcome.
The quarterfinals were full of surprises. Austria and Canada led the field in the second race after strong finishes from Austrian Jakob Dusek and Canada's Eliot Grondin. The time advantages weren't enough. Both teams were eliminated after the women's race, where Bankes showed off her experience by making impressive passes over Canadian Audrey McManiman and Austrian Pia Zerkhold to pull ahead in a photo finish with Australia's Mia Clift.
"Pia was awesome and then the draft at the bottom just cost her a little bit," Dusek said of teammate Zerkhold's finish in their quarterfinal heat. "The luck wasn’t on our side today, which is unfortunate, but we showed that we are super fast and we can race."
In the third quarterfinal heat, French team Jonas Chollet and Chloe Trespeuch were upset when Germany's Jana Fischer and Leon Ulbricht streaked through the finish line first, eliminating them.
France's Aidan Chollet and Julia Nirani-Pereira narrowly won the small final to place 5th overall after a photo finish with Swiss Noemie Wiedmer in the women's race. Wiedmer came 6th with teammate Kalle Koblet.
Both American teams — Nick Baumgartner with Faye Thelen and Nathan Pare with Stacy Gaskill — were eliminated in the quarterfinals.
Mixed Team Snowboard Cross Medalists
🥇 Great Britain Team 1: Huw Nightingale and Charlotte Bankes
🥈 Italy Team 1: Lorenzo Sommariva and Michela Moioli
🥉 France Team 2: Loan Bozzolo and Lea Casta