Mia Brookes of Great Britain competes in Women’s Snowboard Big Air at X Games Aspen 2025

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Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising—after all, she is the reigning slopestyle world champion, the youngest ever to take the title. But 18-year-old British snowboarder Mia Brookes’ recent success still manages to boggle the mind.

Brookes is currently the top Briton and the seventh-ranked woman in the world in slopestyle and is No. 1 in the world in big air, thanks to her three consecutive big air World Cup podiums, two of them wins.

It’s not that Brookes hasn’t had success since she started competing on the World Cup circuit in 2020. But the sheer amount of podium finishes she has had in the last two seasons have captured the sport’s attention as she quickly establishes herself as the next great women’s slopestyle and big air rider.

What does Brookes attribute to this recent shift into a higher gear? Did she flip some sort of switch?

Kind of.

“It’s definitely been a change in mindset, trying to tell myself it’s not about winning—it’s just about going out and having fun and really enjoying it,” Brookes told me. “And I think it’s actually helping because I’ve been doing so well.”

She just may be on to something. Chloe Kim separately said something very similar recently—that when the snowboarding becomes fun again, the winning tends to follow.

Brookes, who hails from Sandbach, Cheshire, became Great Britain’s first ever world champion when she won slopestyle gold at the world championships in Georgia. At 16, she was the youngest snowboard world champion in history.

Mia Brookes of Great Britain wins the gold medal during the FIS Snowboard World Championships Men’s … [+] and Women’s Slopestyle on February 27, 2023 in Bakuriani, Georgia.

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Brookes started snowboarding at 18 months old at Kidsgrove Ski Centre in Stoke.

But it takes many reps on quite a bit more vertical to become a slopestyle world champion. To progress, she would have to travel to bigger mountains than the UK can offer.

For the first 10 or so years of Brookes’ life, she and her family went on ski trips in France and Switzerland. As she began pursuing competitive snowboarding more seriously, they would spend full seasons in Europe.

These days, Brookes spends most of her time training in Laax, Switzerland—where, earlier this month, she took gold in slopestyle, her fourth consecutive World Cup podium.

The win, which came on the eve of her 18th birthday, was the “best present ever,” she said.

Great Britain has produced some great snowboarders. Jenny Jones took slopestyle bronze at Sochi 2014 to become the first Briton to win an Olympic medal in a snow event. Billy Morgan, who is the first snowboarder to land a quad cork, followed up with big air bronze at PyeongChang 2018.

But until Brookes, the UK hadn’t had a world champion in snowboarding. And Team GB has yet to bring home snowboarding gold at a Winter Games.

In 2026, Brookes could very well change that.

The Milano Cortina Olympics snowboarding events will be held in Livigno, Italy—another frequent training location for Brookes. While right now she’s just trying to take things “one event at a time,” earning points toward qualifying for the Olympics is “100 percent” in the back of her mind.

Her next World Cup competitions will be in Aspen from January 30 to February 6, the season’s final big air event and the next slopestyle competition on the calendar.

Brookes was already in Aspen for last weekend’s X Games, where she competed in four total disciplines—slopestyle, big air, Knuckle Huck, and street style, taking bronze in slopestyle and silver in Knuckle Huck.

Mia Brookes competes in women’s snowboard Knuckle Huck at X Games Aspen 2025, where she took silver

Trevor Brown, Jr./X Games

Very few X Games athletes compete in four disciplines. Brookes focused most on slopestyle and big air, missing practices for knuckle huck and street style entirely.

Having events like street syle and Knuckle Huck is “definitely really cool,” Brookes said, because “it allows more people to compete in the X Games.”

“But people like me that are obviously trying to do all of them, it definitely becomes a really crammed week and can be stressful,” she added. “But we got through it, and hopefully next year I’ll be back even stronger.”

Mia Brookes shows off her silver medal from Knuckle Huck at X Games Aspen 2025

Monster Energy

Brookes just narrowly missed out on the X Games big air podium, finishing fourth, but the consensus was that her impeccably executed flat cab 1440 spin earned the unofficial best style award.

Multiple snowboarders I spoke to said that they thought the trick was underscored relative to its difficulty. One male slopestyle rider who has earned multiple X Games medals said he “definitely couldn’t do a flat spin that well.”

“I definitely was hard on myself afterwards and was like, ‘Maybe I should have tried a bigger trick,’” Brookes said. “But just to know that doing that trick already is really difficult, and it’s really hard to put that down, helps. And I’m glad people enjoyed it!”

Brookes has her work cut out for her if she wants to remain on top in slopestyle. At X Games Aspen, New Zealander Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, Brookes’ Monster Energy teammate, threw down the gauntlet when she became the first woman to land a backside triple cork 1440 in a slopestyle competition.

Sadowski-Synnott finished with a score of 94.66 to Brookes’ 88.33.

Brookes is no stranger to claiming NBDs (never-before-done tricks). She was the first woman to land a cab 1440 in competition, putting the trick down cleanly on her first-ever try.

Brookes doesn’t have a triple cork in her slopestyle run yet; she’s just begun to master doubles and wants to add more of them into her runs.

“Maybe next year we’ll try and push it to triples, but obviously just staying steady, trying to qualify for the Olympics. Just building the house really slowly,” Brookes said.

But Brookes and Sadowski-Synnott would both say the same thing when it comes to the progression of women’s slopestyle, which is that the spins and the flips may increase, but style remains paramount.

“It’s something I’ve thought about a lot—I like women’s snowboarding right now,” Brookes said. “The tricks are big enough to look cool but also small enough to add your own style to it, add a bit of an extra tweak to the grab or something.

“I think right now it’s a really cool sport to be in and to watch.”

And the 18-year-old’s stylish, technical riding is a major reason why.