Olympic-Sized Flub For US Snowboarder
The debut of snowboard cross in the Olympics will be remembered for a very long time. The men's final was a gripping thriller. The women's final Friday was simply bizarre.
Lindsey Jacobellis seemed to have a lock on the Olympic women's snowboard cross gold medal, which would have given the United States a gold sweep in snowboarding, and then ¿ incredibly ¿ she made one last move on the penultimate jump and fell.
Coasting to what should have been an easy victory, the American grabbed her board on the way to the finish line. It caused her to fall and, while she scrambled to her feet, Switzerland's Tanja Frieden sped past and became the first champion in the strange and wild sport of Olympic women's snowboard cross.
Jacobellis won silver, but should have had the gold. She was well ahead of Frieden, and the other two women in the four-rider final had fallen long before.
Snowboarding is about style, though, so Jacobellis decided to show off for the fans in front of the grandstand near the end of her ride. But after she landed from her grab, she caught an edge, then went tumbling outside the blue line. When she recovered, she trailed Frieden over the finish line, then put her hands on her knees and held her palms up.
Jacobellis insisted she wasn't showing off.
"When you grab in boarder cross you're trying to get back on the ground as fast as possible," she said. "You try to be stable in the air."
Before the race her proud family was hoping she had the gold in the bag, CBS' Manuel Gallegus reports.
U.S. coach Peter Foley fell onto the ground in disbelief.
He said Jacobellis has always had a tendency to grab her board for stability, but after looking at a frame-by-frame breakdown of the jump shot by Associated Press photos, he conceded Jacobellis probably had gone over the top.
"She definitely styled that a little too hard," he said.
Foley wasn't alone in thinking Jacobellis may have been showing off.
"Sometimes it's subconscious, but that was putting on a show," said American Seth Wescott, the men's champion from the day before. "It's one of those things. I did it in my early rides yesterday but you've got to choose your time and make sure you don't miss."
Despite winning the men's gold in snowboard cross Thursday, the United States fell to fourth in medal rankings, behind Norway, Russia and Germany.
In related developments:
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Track the current medal count here.
That debate will linger about whether Jacobellis was showing off. Either way, though, it was hard to think the only American rider in the women's finals ¿ one of the best in the world ¿ could blow this one.
But she did.
Her flub left the American contingent standing in the bleachers stunned and shocked ¿ Frieden, as well. She knew she had no business winning the gold.
Thus ended another strange and memorable day on the snowboard cross course, where it's the side-by-side racing that usually causes the thrills and spills.
That was very much the case at the top of the course in the finals. Canadian Maelle Ricker, the fastest woman in qualifying, came off a jump, rotated awkwardly, caught her backside edge on the landing and smacked her back and head onto the ground. She was taken off the course on a stretcher. She was conscious and was being taken to a hospital in Turin for observation.
A few moments later, teammate Dominique Maltais, the eventual bronze medalist, went careening into the netting after a jump.
That made it a two-woman show and it wasn't even a contest. Jacobellis could have practically crawled the rest of the way to the finish line. She probably wishes she had.
During the awards ceremony, she stood on the podium beneath Frieden and smiled, but there looked to be some tear stains there.
Jacobellis came into the Olympics as one of the best-known Americans, a poster child for her sport, to say nothing of the credit card company she endorsed. She'll also leave as a poster child for something much different ¿ the whole idea of making sure the victory is sealed before you celebrate.
What's to look forward to? Friday night, American ice dancers show-off their moves in their first performance of the Olympic games. And as Gallegus reports, one of the couples hopes their synchronicity on and off the ice will translate to Olympic gold.
Denis Petukhov and Melissa Gregory portray Romeo and Juliet. Yet the pair is living a separate fabled romance. They say fate brought them together ¿ just as they were both about to give up the sport.
They were both without partners when Petukhov decided to search one last time online.
"We were e-mailing and decided to have a tryout," Petukhov said. "I came to the United States and never used my return ticket."
Soon, their chemistry on the ice became love, a passion that brought their performance to new heights.
"We're married, we're in love and we're going to the Olympics," Petukhov said. "We're pinching each other: Are we real?"