GB’s Brookes wins fifth snowboard World Cup gold

Great Britain’s Mia Brookes won the fifth World Cup round of her freestyle snowboarding career with slopestyle victory in Flachnau on Saturday.

The 19-year-old put down a score of 73.25 in her first run in the Austrian resort and that proved enough to top the podium.

Home hope Anna Gasser pushed Brookes close with a second run of 72.43 to take silver, while United States’s Lily Dhawornvej was third with 66.61.

It was Brookes’ second win of the season – following a Big Air victory in Beijing in December – and her first competitive action since missing out on medals at the Winter Olympics last month.

The result meant Muir finished third in the Big Air season standings. She leads the slopestyle and overall park and pipe standings with one event remaining, in Switzerland, next weekend.

Meanwhile, Italian Dominik Paris won the final men’s downhill race of the season in Lillehammer on Saturday in the first of five days of competition in the World Cup Finals.

Swiss star Marco Odermatt could only finish seventh, but he had already done enough to wrap up a third consecutive World Cup title in the men’s downhill.

The 28-year-old has also claimed a fifth consecutive Crystal Globe as overall champion, as well as the super-G crown, and is in contention to win the giant slalom title on Wednesday.

Before the final three races of the women’s downhill season, Italian Laura Pirovano had never stepped foot on a World Cup podium, yet the 28-year-old completed a remarkable third consecutive victory in Lillehammer to also take the overall title.