Lindsey Jacobellis Sets A Sterling Example

Lindsey Jacobellis is the last person on earth a person should ordinarily feel sorry for, yet even though she did seemingly bring her loss of Olympic Gold on herself, it's hard not to feel at least a smidgen of symppathy for the World Snowboarding Champion. Even though she did somehow manage to pull herself together enough to bing home the Silver Medal in the Womens Snowboarding Event at the 2006 Olympic Games currently being held in Torrino Italy.

Here's how it went down. After winning handily in her matches in the quarter finals and semi-finals, Lindsey, the clean cut, bright eyed blonde haired 20 year old American got off to a quick start in the finals. At one point early in the match, one of her competitors touched the back of Lindsey's snowboard with her own (an incidental type of contact which is legal in snowboarding). This, however, had no effect on Jacobellis, who quickly pulled far ahead.

A bit later, tragedy befell two of her other competitors, both of them Canadians, when they both quickly crashed. Neither of them recovered their footing, and in fact at last count one of them had to be carried off on a stretcher. No word as of yet on her condition, yet, as what I watched was a replay, I am hopeful she was not seriously injured.

At any rate, Lindsey was well ahead of the other remaining competitor, a Swiss snowboarder, and the victory, and the gold, was well within spitting distance, when she looked back. Turning back around, after making the last jump, she did a little twisting move, which turned out to be a bit too celebratory, as it seems to have thrown off her timing. She lost her footing after landing from the last jump, and fell. She recovered quickly enough to finish the race, unfortunately, she finished behind the Swiss snowboarder, who as a result will take home the gold.

Lindsey's entire family was on hand to witness the event, and the disapointment,the anxiety, was palpable on the faces of her father, and other family members, with whom Lindsey evidently still lives. This might be the first time in history a world champion sports figure will be sent home to bed without supper.

I know she was disheartened, and I imagine she felt stupid standing there while the Swiss staff gathered around the victor in cheerful celeratory mood, while Lindsey just stood there, obviously wanting to appear gracous in waiting to offer her congratulations, yet being compeltely ignored, totally out of the loop.

The worse thing about this is if both of the other two competitors had not ealier crashed, she well may not have even taken the silver, or the bronze, for that matter. All because she felt the juvenile need to show off. The world champion snowboarder, who probably felt she was a shoe-in for millions of dollars in commerical endorsement contracts, will now have to temper any potential promises of such with a bit of crow for her dinner. Any appearrances she makes will probably be tempered with all the expected shows of contrition and self-effacement expected of those who make a complete ass ofthemselves.

In the meantime, she will be held up as an example,though not the kind of example she had hoped to be presented as, but an example of how pride can go before the fall-leterally. She will now be seen as a living embodiment of an Aesops Fable, and a reminder to all future potential sports enthusiasts, a warning to keep pride in check and to keep everything in the proper perspective.

"You don't want to end up like Lindsey Jacobellis, do you?', will now be the refrain.

She will I am sure recover from this, and hopefully will be strengthened by it. But when you stop to think of what could have been, in this, her first ever Winter Olympics appearrance, that is, indeed, cold comfort.