This time there was no showboating for the cameras – or dark and prolonged nights of the soul. Instead, on a heartwarming afternoon at the Genting Snow Park, the Winter Olympics witnessed the greatest redemption story in its history.
For 16 years Lindsey Jacobellis has been known as the snowboarder who was miles clear of the Turin 2006 Olympics board cross final – until she fell on the penultimate jump while showing off by taking a celebratory grab of her board. It was an act of reverse alchemy that turned gold into silver, and led to her spending years trying to process and neuter what had happened. Yet somehow, in her fifth Olympics, the American sprung a considerable shock by finally winning a gold medal at the ripe age of 36.
For good measure, her gold in the snowboard cross was also the United States’ first of these Games. “If you look at the start list, I was at high school when some of these girls were born,” she said. “But I think I’m just a competitor, I have been since I was little. It was just always this fire I had inside of me.” And how it raged and burned on Wednesday. As Jacobellis motored towards the finish in the final, she could hear the French boarder Chloé Trespeuch closing. But this time she wasn’t going to let gold slip painfully away.
Afterwards she conceded that without that mistake in 2006 she may never have won gold in Beijing. “Probably not, and I probably would have quit the sport at that point because I wasn’t really having fun with it,” she said. “There was so much pressure on me to be the golden girl. I’d won so many races going into it and it’s a lot for a young athlete to have on their plate.”
As Jacobellis crossed the line this time around, Britain’s supposed banker for the Games, Charlotte Bankes, was still in tears after suffering a shock quarter-final exit. The 26-year-old, who had been widely tipped to add the Olympic title to her 2021 world crown, looked to be in control before losing speed when she skidded wide on a turn and slipped from first to third.
She was unable to recover, and after missing out on the semi-finals by 0.03sec looked shellshocked. “It’s a tough day for me, we didn’t come here for this,” she said, as she tried to come to terms with what had happened. “Honestly, I didn’t feel much more pressure than any other World Cup this season. Unfortunately I just didn’t do the race I wanted today and it’s frustrating to do that at the Olympics.”
Bankes maintained that she had no regrets after switching allegiances from France to Britain in 2018. “No, I’ve never thought back about that, and I’m just super happy for the support I’ve had,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t made that choice.”
Optimism also turned to disappointment for Britain later, as the speed skater Farrell Treacy rode his luck to reach the final of the men’s 1500m short-track before finishing ninth in a race won by Hwang Dae-heon of South Korea. Treacy, who was late arriving at the Games after battling coronavirus, nudged through his quarter-final and was then advanced again after two of his rivals were penalised in their semi-final race. But he looked spent as he finished way down the field.
It meant Britain still had a blank slate of medals after five days of these Games. However, the UK Sport chair, Katherine Grainger, said it was too early to panic. “We still have high hopes for the men’s and women’s curling teams, we’ve got the skeleton to come, plenty more on the snow, so I think we’ll still see Team GB deliver,” she said.
“We’re only day five. I was out in Pyeongchang and it was day seven before we saw a medal, so we’re not panicking yet,” said Grainger, who revealed in January that UK Sport had set a target of between three and seven medals at the Games.
But this day was mostly about Jacobellis, a five-time snowboard cross world champion, who finally secured the ultimate prize. Many had written the American off – not surprisingly given that she had failed to medal at the Pyeongchang, Sochi and the Vancouver Olympics. Instead she became the oldest Olympic medallist in any snowboarding event.
Afterwards she said that when she got to the start line of the final, she felt unusually calm, and that allowed her to banish 2006 from her mind. “They can keep talking about it all they want,” she said. “Because it really shaped me into the individual that I am. It kept me hungry and really helped me to keep fighting in the sport.”
