Seth Udinski, FISM News
On Wednesday, American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis won the gold medal in women’s snowboardcross, giving the U.S. its first gold of the 2022 Beijing Games
With her win, the 36-year-old skier set a new record as the oldest American female athlete to win an Olympic gold in modern games history.
Jacobellis made news headlines as a young snowboarder 16 years ago at the 2006 Torino Olympics, when she fumbled away a gold medal chance going down the last jump and performing a trick while in the lead. She fell and ended up finishing in second place, becoming an unfortunate poster-child for the consequences of celebrating too early. This gold medal, while special for the US, is also sweet retribution for her in the twilight of her career.
She said after her win,
This feels incredible because this level that all the women are riding at is a lot higher than it was 16 years ago. So I felt like a winner just that I made it into finals, because that’s been a challenge every time. All these ladies had the potential to win, and today it just worked out for me that my starts were good, my gliding was great, and everything worked for me today.
In other Olympic News, off-the-field controversy continues to plague the Games as five female ski jumpers from four of the world’s top ski-jumping teams were disqualified from the mixed team ski competition. The disqualification came Tuesday after officials deemed the athletes were wearing “loose-fitting outfits.” The skiers come from Germany, Austria, Norway, and Japan.
Officials said, in general, uniforms have to be form-fitting because baggy uniforms could give the athletes an unfair advantage by providing extra loft while in the air.
Several of the athletes took to social media to defend themselves, saying they’ve competed in the same uniforms before but are being treated differently this time.