- Alyssa Roenigk is a senior writer for ESPN whose assignments have taken her to six continents and caused her to commit countless acts of recklessness. (Follow @alyroe on Twitter).
Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis became the first American gold medalist at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, jumping to an early lead and holding on to win the women’s snowboardcross Wednesday.
Sixteen years after falling in the homestretch of the inaugural Olympic snowboardcross race at the 2006 Games in Torino, Jacobellis, 36, became the oldest snowboarder to medal at the Olympics and earned her second medal in five Games. She also became the oldest American woman to win gold at the Winter Games in any sport, a record previously held by Kikkan Randall, who won gold in cross country skiing in Pyeongchang at age 35.
Outside of Olympic competition, Jacobellis has been dominant throughout a career spanning nearly two decades, a consistent winner in an unpredictable sport. With 30 world cup wins, 10 X Games gold medals and six world championships, she is the greatest snowboardcross racer in the sport’s history. But at the past four Olympics, she earned a reputation for falling short when it counts.
In Torino, Jacobellis held a seemingly insurmountable lead over Switzerland’s Tanja Frieden in the final but famously showboated over the second-to-last jump, slid out and watched Frieden fly past her for gold. She got up in time to salvage silver, but that race haunted Jacobellis like a hex. She fell again in Vancouver, again in her semifinal in Sochi and flamed out in the final in Pyeongchang.
In Beijing, Jacobellis was brilliant, defending her line when she needed to, and using her competitors’ draft when she fell behind. In the final, she got out to an early lead over Chloe Trespeuch of France that she never relinquished.
After she crossed the finish line, Jacobellis let out a scream, grabbed her heart and skidded to a stop at the bottom of the course as the magnitude of the moment hit her.
In her record fifth Olympics and with the spotlight fading and outside expectations waning, Jacobellis finally did the thing the world has expected her to do since 2006: win gold.
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