When British Olympic snowboarder Mia Brookes needed something extra to steady her nerves and sharpen her focus in the Olympic Big Air final, she didn’t turn to pop anthems or pre-game playlists — she turned the volume up on Pantera.
The teenage star endured a dramatic road to the Big Air finals, crashing on her first three jumps before posting scores of 89.0 and 78.0 on her final two runs just to sneak through. Sitting third overall heading into Monday, February 10’s final, Brookes later admitted that heavy metal was the key to blocking out the pressure.
“I just listen to music to try to block out all the noise going on around me,” she told Olympics.com. “Mostly heavy metal music like Metallica, Pantera, Judas Priest, stuff like that.”
But when it came time for the biggest jump of her Olympic run, only one band made the cut.
According to The Guardian, Brookes was listening to Pantera as she stood atop the 150-foot-high ramp, sitting fourth in the standings and needing something extraordinary to land on the podium. The 19-year-old opted to attempt a backside 1620 — a trick that had only been landed once before in the history of women’s snowboarding.
Brookes appeared to stick the landing, touching down solidly on her heels, but the sheer momentum of the rotation caused her to overspin slightly, ultimately costing her a medal.
“It’s not like it’s a trick that I could do,” Brookes told The Guardian. “I’ve only ever done it on the airbag and the last time I tried it was five months ago. So that was the first time I’ve ever tried it on snow. But sometimes you’ve just got to grit your teeth and get it done.”
She later admitted that her metal soundtrack may have pushed her just a little too far. “I thought I’d got it and I did get it. I got it to my feet but I just gave it too much power, listening to my music too loud, I spun it too quickly,” she said, still smiling. “But yeah, I’m pumped.”
Brookes didn’t shy away from the risk involved either. “I was listening to a lot of Pantera,” she added. “I tried it and I’m not lying in a hospital bed after this, to be honest. All jokes aside, it’s a gnarly trick to do. There is a higher risk, especially when you know I would be the second woman to do it. So, yeah it’s pretty scary.”
Though she ultimately finished fourth, there was widespread belief that a clean landing could have put her as high as silver.
Despite missing out on a Big Air medal, Brookes remains one of Team Great Britain’s standout stars. The slopestyle competition — where she has already proven herself dominant — is still to come. She won slopestyle gold at the 2023 World Championships and took first place at both the 2024 and 2026 X Games. In Big Air, she previously claimed World Cup victories in the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 seasons.
Metal, meanwhile, has long been a constant in her rise. When Brookes became the youngest snowboarding world champion in history in 2023, she credited Metallica with helping her lock into the right mindset.
“Listening to Metallica gets me hyped up and wanting to land all my tricks,” she told the BBC at the time. “It gets me in that mindset in the mornings. If I’m standing at the top of a slope, it helps me visualize when I’m going to drop in.”
She’s even joked about trading trophies for Black Sabbath tickets — and once summed things up perfectly on Instagram, calling Pantera her “favourite band evah.”
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