There's Snow Limit
James Barnes-Miller leaves Thanet behind for a shot at the Paralympic snowboarding medals, not bad for a former loft converter
“Your call could not be connected…” is probably the phrase you should expect to hear when trying to phone interview someone halfway up a mountain. But you still panic a bit. I’m not sure why. “That’s that then, won’t hear from him.”
Into the wee hours and a fourth call to the Canadian training camp for Team GB’s Paralympic snowboarders and it finally connects.
“Sorry mate, I’ve never got any signal where I am.”
James Barnes-Miller is back from the slopes and resting-up after taking a bit of a knock during a run.
“It should be okay, I’ve just got to rest it,” he says. His chill, chills me.
I don’t know if I would be as calm as him knowing that years of work and an Olympic-sized dream could be scuppered with the turn of a knee or ankle.
But I should have seen it coming. He’s a snowboarder. And they tend to take the world on at their own pace.
If we are honest, the former East Kent College student, doesn’t look like your average clean-cut BBC-adored Olympic athlete, he looks like a man who loves extreme sports.
He has the beard, the long hair, and the unflustered defiance so associated with the Californian longboard skaters of the 1980s. It’s fucking refreshing. But forget years of playing SSX Tricky on the Playstation and dreams of winter sports adventures.
“I skateboarded for as long as I can remember with my brothers and my mates,” says Barnes-Miller, who cites Revolution Skatepark in Broadstairs as a formative hangout, while his mates include our introducer, Dave Melmoth, the co-founder of Kent’s Wheels & Fins festival and the Joss Bay Surf School.
“I was always at the skate park and people kept telling me I’d love snowboarding, but I just thought it would be too expensive.
“About seven years ago, I finally went on a lad’s trip snowboarding and completely fell in love with it,” he says. “It was just incredible to do this sport up in the mountains. There’s nothing better.”
“Then, about three years ago, we were away boarding again, and we bumped into a couple of the guys from the Parlaympic team. They asked if I fancied coming along to a training camp and that was it.”
Barnes Miller was born with neither a right hand, or the arrogance of other Olympian interviewees I have encountered, and thus has qualified for the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. But he is a Kent boy, and he makes light of his ‘disability’, calling his Instgram profile ‘Stubbergram’ and quipping: “As my mum says, the only thing it’s stopped me from doing is carrying two cups.”
The 28-year-old has already set a record by becoming part of the first ever Team GB snowboard squad to take part in the Paralympic Games after the sport made its debut in Sochi 2014.
But his laidback attitude can take nothing away from the fight he has shown to be where he is.
A gruelling two weeks of acclimatising to the -21C weather in Pyeongchang is coming before he competes in the banked slalom event and then the brutal snowboard cross where he will be on the course fighting against multiple riders at the same time – expect thrills, spills, falls and, occasionally, brawls.
“In the bank slalom, I’ll have a couple of runs to get a fastest time and that’s just against the clock, how fast you can get down the course,” he explains. “But the snowboard cross, in the heats it’s a knockout where you race head-to-head against other riders. You can race quite a few times just to get to the finals. It can be tough.”
That naturally instilled Thanet edge surely makes him a favourite should anything kick off, even if he has only go one hand. In fact, it’s pretty obvious he likes a challenge. Having only started snowboarding little more than three years ago, Barnes-Miller has already been ranked fourth in the world in snowboard cross following championships in Tahoe and Canada where he brought back two world cup silver medals.
The Team GB squad was the goal.
“We get set criteria that you have to achieve in order to get selected,” he says. “I knew I had ticked all the boxes and I just had to wait to make sure everything was cool with
the selection committee. But it was all sweet!”
From appearing on shows like Channel Four’s The Last Leg to the countless trackside interviews given to TV broadcasters from around the world, the Paralympians are in something of a media Backside 1260 for a good few months – something that will extend even further should they bring home some discs of precious metal.
But the potential fame and sponsorships that come from being an Olympic winner are a way away from our boy’s former life as a loft converter.
“Yeah, used to work for Brian Roberts Loft Conversions in Kent,” says Barnes-Miller. “He was a sound boss. I was actually with him when we bumped into the Paralympic guys on the slopes, and he let me have the time off to go on the training camps.
“When I had to make a decision about snowboarding or work, I said’ I’ve got to do this man’, and he said, ‘I don’t blame ya!’
“He lets me come back and work when I’m about. He has supported me massively.”
The boarder has already spent some time under the media spotlight after his custom-made snowboards and £10k-worth of gear was stolen from a van in Disley, Cheshire, putting his dreams in doubt.
"I woke up and found out the back window had been popped open and they had taken my snowboard bag, my coach's snowboard bag and some of the team's kit,” he says.
"Normally everything comes out of the van after training, it's just the one time I didn't and that happens.”
A Go-Fund-Me page was set up and friends, supporters and sponsors including Panda Optics (goggles), Norvern Snowboards, Love Inc snowboards, Browns Trimming and Reds10, stepped-up to help out.
“The support was incredible. I got some new sponsors out of it and really didn’t expect it to go as mad as it did,” he says.
Other than looking forward to a drink at this year’s Wheels & Fins Festival - “I’ve been off the drink for two years for qualifying” – Barnes-Miller has only got one thing on his mind. Winning.
“I’m going there to get on the podium. That’s the point in racing. Yeah, different courses suit different people, and we won’t know about the course until we get there, but the reason I am there is to try and take home some medals.”
