Lindsey Jacobellis is an American snowboarder from Roxbury, Connecticut. The most decorated female snowboard cross athlete of all time, she dominated the sport for almost two decades as a five-time World Champion and ten-time X Games champion.
Lindsey Jacobellis: 2006 torino| Medal ceremony| Gold medal
2006 Torino:
When Lindsey Jacobellis crossed the finish line to win gold in women’s snowboard cross – the first U.S. gold medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics – the Connecticut native pumped her fists in the air.
“I’m so happy for her,” Frieden said on Wednesday. “She definitely deserved it. She’s such an amazing athlete.”
Frieden’s name might not be familiar to American readers, even though she played a major role in one of the most iconic – and infamous – moments in U.S. Olympic history.
Medal Ceremony:
At the 2006 Torino Winter Games, Jacobellis became famous for one of the biggest blunders in sports history when she lost her lead after going for a celebratory board grab on the second-to-last jump.
At the time, Frieden was dating American Seth Wescott, who won Olympic gold in the men’s event one day earlier. “We went for it, wishing to win two gold medals at the Olympics, the first boardercross Olympics.”
But as Frieden, then 30, celebrated her gold medal, she struggled with the way Jacobellis’ silver-medal performance was received.
Gold medal:
“She won silver, right? And she was young,” Frieden said. “It was quite crazy from the outside world…. I think the media in the (United) States was super harsh with her.“ I really could feel the pain that she had.”
For Frieden, this was no abstract feeling of pain. It was a lesson that she had learned too, taught by Lindsey Jacobellis herself.
Three years earlier, at the 2003 X Games, it was Frieden who led the women’s boardercross final.
