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Great Britain’s Charlotte Bankes won her first Snowboard Cross World Cup race since breaking her collarbone in April with a dominant display in Dongbeiya.
The 30-year-old showed she is in fine form heading into the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, moving through qualification at the Chinese resort as the fastest athlete, then winning both her quarter and semi-final.
Bankes then triumphed in the Big Final, finishing ahead of Australian Josie Baff and France’s Chloe Trespeuch to seal the second World Cup event of the season.
The win is Bankes’ first podium finish since she took bronze at the Montafon World Cup in March, and is her first victory since the Gudauri World Cup the same month.
Having fully recovered from the injury she sustained at the final World Cup event of last season, the two-time Crystal Globe winner now looks set to challenge for an Olympic medal in Italy.
The then reigning world champion, Bankes was knocked out in the quarter-finals at the 2022 Games in Beijing.
A second set of races will be held in Dongbeiya on Sunday, while the 2026 Winter Olympics open on 6 February.
Meanwhile, Neil Simpson took his third World Cup podium of the week with silver in the Saalbach World Cup Super G races on Friday.
Racing alongside guide Rob Poth, Simpson secured his first ever Super G World Cup podium in the discipline in which he won gold at the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games and the 2023 World Championships.
The 23-year-old Scot had already won bronze medals in the back-to-back Downhill World Cup races earlier in the week.
