Lindsey Jacobellis wins Team USA’s first gold in fifth Winter Olympics

Lindsey Jacobellis won gold in women’s snowboard cross to claim Team USA’s first gold medal of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

With the win, the 36-year-old Jacobellis becomes the oldest American woman to win a medal of any color – in any sport – at the Winter Olympics. She is also the oldest snowboarding medalist of any gender, according to Olympedia.org. Beijing also marks a record-tying fifth Olympic appearance for the Connecticut native.

“Racing with these girls definitely keeps me young, and they just keep getting younger,” Jacobellis said.

After posting the fifth-fastest time in qualifying, Jacobellis nearly saw her Olympics come to an end in her first heat of the day.

“I completely blew the start and I had to go on the hunt,” Jacobellis said. “It helped bring my momentum back to start doing well on the starts again.”

Just to reach the final, she had to defeat a stacked semifinal field that included reigning Olympic gold medalist Michela Moioli of Italy.

Once that was out of the way, “I actually felt like I was already a winner that I just made it into finals,” she said. “It’s been a long road for myself, ups and downs, injuries.”

That’s an understatement.

During her two-decade international career, Jacobellis developed into one of the most dominant snowboarders of all-time, in any discipline. She won 10 X Games titles before snowboard cross was nixed from the competition in 2016, plus five individual world titles (the last one came in 2017).

But Jacobellis has had less success on the Olympic stage, with her only medal until now (a silver) coming at the 2006 Torino Games when she infamously lost her lead in the final after going for a celebratory board grab.

One of the differences between Jacobellis’ first four Olympic