Night on the beers helps GB pair win historic gold in mixed snowboard cross

“Knowing that Charlotte Bankes is behind me – such an incredible rider – kind of loosens me up,” he said. “And I know that when I’m loose, I can ride really well.” As well as the physicality of an event that involves descending more than 150m in altitude while dealing with 24 turns and obstacles, Bankes also showed vast calm shortly before the semi-final.

With the clock counting down, she got hold of a screwdriver herself to help change the binding – the part that attaches the ski-boots to the snowboard – after a breakage in the previous round. “It put a bit of stress on the coaches and the wax techs, but they were great as well to let me change it,” she said.

Bankes and Nightingale had previously also won the world mixed snowboard title together in 2023, with Olympic gold the one major medal missing from Bankes’s stellar career. Born in Hemel Hempstead to British parents Mark and Kate, the family moved to the southern Alps when she was only four and she competed for France in two Olympics until 2018 before switching allegiance to the country of her birth.

Nightingale had also honed his craft in the Alps, moving with his parents from Bolton when they opened a B&B in Westendorf, some 15km from the legendary Kitzbühel slope. His parents, Clive and Christine, were overcome with emotion at the bottom of the piste in Livigno. A group of his best friends from Westendorf also certainly made themselves heard at the bottom of the slope.

“I cry at anything,” said his tearful father Clive. “Long Lost Families, Steve McQueen getting caught in barbed wire in the Great Escape, but this is indescribable.”

His mother Christine added: “Huw played a blinder today. He wasn’t just playing safe. He really attacked.”

It added up to Britain’s greatest Olympic performance on snow following previous peaks of bronze medals by Morgan, Jenny Jones and Izzy Atkin. All 13 other previous Winter Olympic golds had been won on ice, with Team GB having now surpassed their record gold-medal tally, and trying to get past their best overall medal haul of five at a Winter Games in both 2014 and 2018.