Charlotte Bankes
Personal information
NationalityBritish
Born (1995-06-10) 10 June 1995 (age 28)
Hemel Hempstead, England
Height1.63 m (5 ft 4 in)
Weight60 kg (132 lb)
Sport
CountryGreat Britain
SportSnowboarding
EventSnowboard cross
ClubEcrins Snowboard
Medal record
Women's snowboarding
Representing  Great Britain
World Championships
Gold medal – first place 2021 Idre Snowboard cross
Gold medal – first place 2023 Bakuriani Mixed team snowboard cross
Silver medal – second place 2019 Utah Snowboard cross
Representing  France
World Championships
Silver medal – second place 2017 Sierra Nevada Team snowboard cross

Charlotte Bankes (born 10 June 1995) is a British-born snowboarder who represented France in international competition before the start of the 2018–2019 season and Great Britain from that point onwards.[1][2] She competed at the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Women's snowboard cross.[3]

Career

Bankes and her family moved from Hemel Hempstead to Puy-Saint-Vincent in the southern Alps in 1999. She had already started skiing by this time, having first tried it at age two, but took up snowboarding in the footsteps of her brothers William and Thomas, who have competed in the sport internationally. She started competing internationally for France in 2010. The following year she sustained a pelvis fracture in a crash, which left her in "constant pain" and unable to train at full intensity for several years.[4]

She made her debut on the FIS Snowboard World Cup a few months before representing France at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.[5][4] She also competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, where she finished 7th. After the 2018 Games, she switched from representing France to competing for Great Britain, partly due to struggling to fully recover from her pelvic injury, despite the French Ski Federation paying for surgery and therapy.[4] She took her first World Cup podium finish for Team GB in a race in Breuil-Cervinia in December 2018, where she pipped her former French team-mate Nelly Moenne-Loccoz to third place.[6]

She participated at the FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships 2019, winning a silver medal in the snowboard cross competition.[7] Two years later, she went one better at the FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships 2021, when she won the snowboard cross competition.[8][9][10]

References

  1. ^ "Snowboard – Snowboard Cross – Athlete: Charlotte Bankes". International Ski Federation. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  2. ^ "Exclusive Interview with Charlotte Bankes – the newest member of GB Snowsport". j2ski.com. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  3. ^ "Charlotte Bankes 2022 Olympics | NBC Olympics". www.nbcolympics.com. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Hope, Nick (30 January 2019). "Charlotte Bankes almost quit snowboarding before GB switch". BBC. Retrieved 3 February 2019.
  5. ^ "Charlotte Bankes bio, stats and results". Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  6. ^ "Bankes scoops first Snowboard Cross World Cup medal of season". Team GB. 21 December 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2019.
  7. ^ Snowboard cross results
  8. ^ Snowboard cross results
  9. ^ "How Charlotte Bankes overcame a devasting injury to become a world champion". olympics.com.
  10. ^ "BANKES Charlotte - Athlete Information". www.fis-ski.com. Retrieved 16 February 2022.

External links

World champions in women's snowboard cross
World champions in team snowboard cross
Categories