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]
Bankes and her family moved from Hemel HempsteadtoPuy-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 OlympicsinSochi, Russia.[5][4] She also competed at the 2018 Winter OlympicsinPyeongchang, 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-CerviniainDecember 2018, where she pipped her former French team-mate Nelly Moenne-Loccoz to third place.[6]
