Sixteen-year-old British snowboarder Mia Brookes claimed third place in the European Olympic Committees’ (EOC) Piotr Nurowski Prize for the Best European Young Athlete, following a stellar breakthrough season.
The Piotr Nurowski Prize, now in its eighth winter edition, recognises young athletes who have not only excelled in their sport, but have embraced the values and culture of Olympism both inside and outside of competition.
And Brookes, who only turned 16 in January this year, was awarded third place after votes were cast by European National Olympic Committees (NOC) at the recent EOC Seminar in Paris.
Her latest success follows an outstanding winter season, where she became the youngest snowboarding world champion of all-time following slopestyle gold in Bakuriani, Georgia in February.
On the way to that accolade, she became the first woman to land the first-ever cab 1440 trick in competitive snowboarding, and was also one of eight female snowboarders invited to the prestigious X Games in Aspen.
Her fellow finalists include Italian ski mountaineering athlete Erik Canovi, Slovakian ice hockey star Nela Lopusanova, Ukrainian biathlete Oleksandra Merkushyna and Belgian figure skater Nina Pinzarrone. Each of the finalists receive a training scholarship in addition to their trophy, with Brookes awarded 5,000 euros to support her in the next stage of her career.
The Piotr Nurowski Prize has been awarded by the EOC since 2011 and is named after the Polish tennis player and former chief of the Polish Olympic Committee.
Each year five athletes are shortlisted after receiving nominations from the NOCs in Europe.
Team GB athletes have been recognised often in the Piotr Nurowski awards with Tom Daley (2011), Abbie Wood (2013), Giarnni Regini Moran (2014), Luke Greenbank (2015), Amy Tinkler (2016), Sky Brown (2021) and Andrea Spendolini-Siriex (2022) all being acknowledged for their sporting achievements at various summer Olympic youth and senior levels.
Brookes becomes the third winter athlete from Great Britain to be recognised, following in the footsteps of freestyle skiers Madi Rowlands (2016) and Kirsty Muir (2021).