- Lindsey Jacobellis produced one of the biggest blunders in
Winter Olympics history at Turin 2006. - The American crashed while prematurely celebrating victory in the snowboard cross event.
Veteran American snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis finally became an Olympic champion on Wednesday, 16 years after she cost herself a gold medal by celebrating victory prematurely.
Jacobellis, 36, finished first in the women's snowboard cross in Beijing at what was her fifth appearance at the Winter Olympics.
At Turin 2006, the Connecticut-born star produced one of the biggest blunders in winter games history in the final of the same event.
With two of the four racers having crashed out, Jacobellis was leading the race by a large margin going into the penultimate jump. As she stormed to certain victory she decided to perform an aerial trick known as a method grab to celebrate.
Her decision backfired however, as she crashed upon landing. Although she eventually got back to her feet, she was overtaken by Switzerland's Tanja Frieden.
"What was she thinking in the air with just two jumps to go?!" said the commentator at the time. Jacobellis would later say she was just having "fun."
Jacobellis seemed to be haunted by bad luck at the Olympics after that and failed to win in 2010, 2014, or 2018. She was disqualified in the semis in 2010, fell in the 2014 semis, and finished fifth in the 2018 final.
But in Beijing, Jacobellis found herself in a similar position to where she was in Turin — leading on the home straight.
This time she did not make the same mistake.
"It was never about redemption," Jacobellis, who is most decorated snowboard cross athlete of all-time, said after finally getting her hands on an Olympic gold.
"I didn't have [Turin] in my mind coming here, I just wanted to have fun, being my fifth appearance at an Olympics.
"My thought going into this was, 'It's either going to happen or it's not', and: 'It could be my day or it could be another one of the ladies' days.' So it just happened that all the stars lined up for me, for it to be my day."
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Jacobellis' victory saw her become the oldest snowboarding gold medalist in Olympic history, as well as the oldest American woman to win a medal of any sort at the Winter Olympics.
"I guess five times is the charm and how it needed to be. You never know why," she said, adding: "Don't count the old girl out."