Kirk Michael’s Brandon Cain is set to make his FIS Snowboard World Cup debut in the Sierra Nevada region of Spain later this week.

His pathway in the discipline of snow boardcross has been supported by Zoe Gillings’s GBX set-up (covering training, coaching and accommodation for six months).

Sponsorship support from locally-based e-gaming company PokerStars has recently been confirmed. Prior to this he was largely self-funded.

Last year the 21-year-old made a successful comeback from a major crash in Austria in which he suffered internal bleeding and a ruptured spleen.

After a successful season on the European circuit, achieving several podium finishes, he was invited to join the official GB Snowsport team for training in October and November.

Unfortunately, a dislocated elbow put him out for a month, but the coaches were pleased with his progress and asked him to attend Europa Cup races from January onwards.

He had to mix his GBX group training with the official GB Snowsport sessions, leading to his maiden World Cup selection race for a snowboard cross event in Germany at the end of January.

Similar to home, the weather in the Alps has not been ideal this season, leading to a number of events either being postponed or cancelled, notably the event in Germany because of a lack of snow.

The former QEII School then IoM College student was quite literally in the holding pens for a Europa Cup event the Sunday before last when proceedings were halted because of 80kmh winds.

He and Bryn Nicholas, an Australian with British parentage, have been selected for this week’s World Cup round in Spain, the first occasion GB Snowsport has had a male entry at this level in snowboard cross.

North of Malaga, the Andalusian ski resort is only 32km from Granada city and 100km from the Mediterranean coastline.

Training for the event starts in earnest on Thursday, with qualification on Friday and the finals on Saturday. A total of 65 men and 40 woman are entered.

Brandon is very appreciative of the support he has had via Isle of Man Sport Institute’s strength and conditioning programme.

Sports performance co-ordinator, Chris Quine, commented: ’Brandon joined the Sport Aid programme around 2016 and since then has worked really hard in the gym.

’He is a bit of a dream for the coaches as he is always looking to work hard and improve himself. I am sure that the work he had done in 2017 helped him to recover quickly from his serious accident in 2018.’

The programme, which has been running since 2005, aims to develop key strengths and movement skills that will assist and complement technical sport-specific training.

Isle of Man Sport has a number of UK Strength and Conditioning Association-accredited coaches who assess the athletes, draw up a personalised programme and then supervise and guide the training sessions in the gym.

Brandon has had financial support via scholarships through IoM Sport Aid sponsors. This year he also has also had some additional sponsorship from Bespoke Garages of IoM Business Park, Aston International of Douglas and Red7 Ski Wear.