Truly, the first-time gold medalist should be more famous than Shaun White.
On Wednesday in Beijing, the greatest snowboardcross athlete of all time finally slew her Olympic demons. Sixteen years after a very bad decision near the finish line clinched her place in Olympic infamy, 36-year-old Lindsey Jacobellis finally won gold at this, her fifth consecutive Winter Olympics. Though she was by far the oldest competitor in the field, Jacobellis finished first in every single heat, and won the big final by 0.21 seconds in a race that she led the entire time.
Most of us stop caring about professional snowboarding once the Olympics are over, but top winter sports athletes such as Jacobellis don’t just go home and enter cryostasis in the four-year periods between Olympic Games. All winter long, these athletes perform at high-level events where the competition is just as tough as it is at the Olympics.The fact that these races aren’t Olympic events doesn’t make them any less valid as measures of an athlete’s long-term greatness.