From Gaffe to Gold: Lindsey Jacobellis' Olympic Redemption

There she was, flying through the air at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy; “America's Sweetheart” of snowboarding, Lindsey Jacobellis, found herself needing to land just two more jumps to make history and fulfill her much-discussed potential. Then, thud. 

As she had been gaining air, Jacobellis grabbed the heel side of her snowboard— known as “a method grab.” But the move caused her to lose her balance, crash, and hit the snow. Before she could get back on her feet, another boarder sped past her, the gold medal slipping out of her grasp. 

As soon as she eventually crossed the finish line, journalists shoved cameras and microphones into 20-year-old Jacobellis’ face. Would you care to comment on today’s disastrous result? Why did you decide to showboat at the end? How does it feel throwing away a gold medal? 

“I was immediately getting bombarded with media, and they were already giving me all this shame and disappointment,” Jacobellis told us on In the Moment with David Greene. “They wanted the reason. They wanted to understand why I was showboating.”

That label, a “showboater,” followed her for the next 16 years. But the media’s questions were missing something—not just nuance, but also a deeper understanding of Jacobellis and her sport. “You don't understand,” she told us. ”Yeah, maybe I looked like a showboater, but to me, I was just having fun, and it was just something that happened.” 

“It was just bad timing, and it was just bad luck,” she told us.

Read the rest of this article from Sarah McCrory here