“It was like if not now, then when?” Mia Brookes’ Coach Takes us Behind the Scenes at the Olympics

Whitelines: How do you prepare for an event like this? Has it been a long time in the making?
Ben Kinnear: I suppose if you look two years ago, yeah, we’ve had a mind on this event. But for Mia, I don’t think that would have changed the way that she went about her business. X Games has been up there as a priority in the last couple of years, and the tricks she’s learned lend themselves to the Olympics, but they weren’t necessarily created just for this one event.

As you know, snowboarding is very self-determined—athletes like Mia have got a good eye on the tricks that they want to learn, and they keep an eye on the progression of the sport and what’s needed to compete. But with Mia in particular, she always wants to put her stamp on things. It’s not just chasing the tricks everyone else is doing. 

What does a normal training day look like, and was this any different?
Well, no two days are ever exactly the same. One day we could be heading somewhere where we know there’s going to be a bunch of other riders from other countries that Mia’s gonna get on really well with, and who’ll push her. And then they’ll maybe have a fun expression session and start to play with new grabs. 

Or, it might be like we were in December, just Mia and me, purely on our own in a park in Ruka up in Finland, working very specifically on a frontside 10 and getting that done.

What’s great about Mia, more than just about any other athlete, is she will genuinely want to go snowboarding every single day. The mileage and repetition she gets because she enjoys it so much is part of what builds her amazing level of consistency—but also her flair.

“Mia always wants to put her stamp on things. It’s not just chasing the tricks everyone else is doing”

Sounds like the difference between learning to play a song on guitar, and really learning to perform it?
Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it. And with Mia, her repetition is not because she’s this bot coming out and saying “right, I need to do five of these backside 12s”. She’s still this hungry snowboarder, who wants to go and throw methods over there, then come and do her five backside 12s, then go and ride rails for four and a half hours and film an edit.

Of course, contests aren’t the be all and end all. But does the Olympics feel different?
It’s definitely a new experience. I joked that I wasn’t that fussed about the opening ceremony. But as coaches, we got given marching passes, doing that little 10 second walk out, it’s kind of funny, but it almost legitimised my entire career choice in the eyes of some friends and family [laughs]

People are like “ah, I saw you on the TV”. And now I have like my neighbours texting Hannah [Ben’s wife] back home and trying to understand how snowboard scoring works in Big Air.

It also seems like a lot of people are like, “holy crap, snowboarding looks so fun, I want to give it a whirl” or, you know, the neighbours’ children want to give it a shot. And that’s kind of what it’s all about.

Yeah, it’s always a big chance to communicate the fun of snowboarding to a bigger audience.
The fun of it, but also like the respect between riders you know? Obviously the Big Air final showcased amazing progression, but also the mutual respect everyone had for the risks everyone was taking, and the sportsmanship on show.

Yeah, the way everyone congratulated each other—like Mia hugging the women who’d kept her off the podium, and Anna Gasser congratulating people, that’s one of the coolest things about competitive snowboarding. 

What took me by surprise is how emotional it felt after that event for everyone involved—including all of us coaches at the top. Coming down, no matter the position, there was just this mutual respect.

Maybe it was just understanding how much time and energy we’d all put in, being away from friends and family all the time, and all the sacrifices we’d made. To then go and put on a show like that, and it feels like the world’s really seen what it’s all about, it does feel… Well, it’s not even about it all being worthwhile, but it surprised me the level of emotion that I felt.

OK, so talk us through the show then. It must’ve been nerve-wracking when she went down in qualis?
Yeah, that’s quite rare for Mia. But that just meant it was like ultra-focused, land at all costs on jump two, which she did. And that was quite good prep to come through that actually. It just shows how steely she is.

And then the final was one of the most progressive displays of women’s Big Air snowboarding ever. Did Mia know beforehand that she was going to try the 1620 on her third hit?
Well, we talk about stuff in advance. You know, with the different ways that it might play out. We knew that a really good 12 and a 14 might stand a chance, but obviously so much depends on what everyone else lands.

And as soon as Suenguen Yu had landed both her runs, and she was dropping before us, I knew those tricks were only gonna maybe scrape a podium because of the level. I was like “right, this is on now, you’re gonna need everything.”

There had been a little discussion earlier because Mia had to hold on pretty hard for that cab 14 [her first jump]. It was a bit on the heels. So we knew she could probably get five or six points more by cleaning it up. Anyway, between runs two and three, she went to get fluoro tested…

What’s that, like drugs tested?
No, the board gets taken into a tent and scanned for illegal fluoros or wax.

I didn’t realise that was a thing. Nuts.
Yeah, it only takes like 30 seconds or a minute. But by the time she got to the top of the elevator [taking riders up to the drop-in] we only had a few minutes. Mia tells me she’s going to do a Cab 14 clean up, and I, and I just had to give her the facts quickly. Like look, Koko [Murase] is probably going to land the Cab 14 cleaner.

If Koko fell in the last run, you might just scrape a bronze. But it’s going to be a tight one. You do a 16 and it’s probably a 92, or 93. And at that point that was going to be first place.

“It was like, if Koko fell in the last run, you might just scrape a bronze…”

But she’d never done the 16 on snow before?
Yeah. We talked about it all week. We discussed whether it was possible in that jump or not because it felt kind of small. She’d done it on an airbag, and we were close to having a go on snow but—well, afterwards, I laughed, because she didn’t want to try it earlier in front of maybe 10 people in training, and instead she waited until there’s over a million people watching.

It’s so ballsy to go for something like that, in that moment.
Yeh, but the whole atmosphere up there was everybody going full send right from the very start. It was like, if not now, then when do you give it a crack? And Mia was excited for it. She got gee’d up, then calmed her heart rate down enough to be calm and in that moment and then give it a shot. And I’ll tell you what, I honestly thought she’d landed because the crowd was so noisy. 

I’ve got a radio in my ear but I remember all I got was static from whoever was at the bottom trying to tell me what happened because there was so much noise. And then I looked around and [GB Snowsport Ski Coach] Pat Sharples is in the start gate with his hands in his head and I was like does that mean she just landed? So for about 10, 15 seconds, I’m like: “no way…”

And even though she fell, it was the right call, right?
Yeh, Koko then laced up the last one. And that just confirmed it was the right call to go for it. I was incredibly proud of her, giving it a crack—honestly, sometimes even I don’t know how she can step up and do that.

Mia’s got no regrets. I mean, you can’t really ask for much more than landing your two biggest tricks and then having a crack at what was an NBD, at least for her. And the best thing is now, she’s now full of confidence. I really noticed that when we got the bus a couple hours later, it made her pretty hungry for slopestyle.

Amazing. Well, I can’t wait to see what Mia can do in slope. Good luck with it, and thanks for talking to us Ben.
Cheers!