Steve Dilbeck! d00d! Like, lighten up and stuff. (Lindsey Jacobellis is not the failure of the 21st century)
I said I'd blog about this Steve Dilbeck column from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Excerpts (emphasis mine):
It was youth. It was the culture. It was the moment.
Yeah, sure, and it was not very smart.
That's it in the end. That's what Lindsey Jacobellis has to live with for, oh, the rest of her life....
Jacobellis gave us the anti-Olympic moment Friday in the women's snowboardcross final....
[A]s Jacobellis approached the last of two jumps before the finish line, she turned certain victory into the biggest giveaway since the Indians unloaded Manhattan for a handful of beans....
Jacobellis went hotdog. Went showboat. Tried to add a little snowboarder flare to her victory.
Instead of just taking the jump routinely and cruising to victory, she twisted her board in mid air and clutched it momentarily with a hand.
Hope it was worth it.
She landed on an edge and flipped over.
Frieden came over the jump and couldn't believe her good fortune. Jacobellis got back up, but as she struggled to approach the final hill without momentum, Frieden flew past her and to the easy and unexpected victory....
"I just went at the jump because I was having fun and snowboarding is fun," she said. "I was feeling great that I was ahead and I wanted to share with the crowd my enthusiasm. But you know, I messed up and, oh well, it happens."
Oh well, stuff happens. Just usually not with Olympic gold on the line. Not with a world watching, wincing.
Suddenly Jacobellis remembered she had a huge lead and that she was trying to show off.
And then stumbled so badly it could only try to draw historic comparisons....
This was a flop for the ages. The hardest of lessons to learn....
There is seizing the moment, and a lifetime of explaining how it was given away.
Huh? You'd think that Lindsey Jacobellis had murdered Ashlee Simpson or something. (Though some would consider that a plus.)
Anti-Olympic moment?!?
I define an anti-Olympic moment as the murder of the Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics. Or perhaps the murder and injuries in the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. And conceivably one could argue that the 1980 and 1984 boycotts were anti-Olympic.
But to call Lindsey Jacobellis' hot-dogging anti-Olympic and a flop of the ages of historic comparisons? Sorry, I'm not buying.
Tom Goodman emerges from the streets of Philadelphia to put this into perspective:
We’ve all seen the hot-dogging football player who is just about to strut across the goal line, dragging his feet in an exaggerated motion and styling a la the Heisman trophy pose, when, lo and behold, he is stripped of the ball by an opposing player who literally appears out of nowhere. Ignominy? No, just hot-dogging.
So, when Lindsey Jacobellis blew a sure gold medal by hot-dogging it near the finish line, everyone clucked and admonished her for such foolhardiness. But snowboarding is about hot-dogging in part and apparently Jacobellis has performed the exact same move dozens if not hundreds of times. The only difference is that this time, she missed it at the worst possible moment.
But what do the organizers expect from a 20-year old X-Games look-alike?
Proving that I am not trendy, I cannot understand half of the terms used at snowboarding.com to describe the mishap:
Jacobellis, the lone American rider in the field, led for most of the final run before crashing on a jump on the lower portion of the course. Leading by a good margin, Jacobellis pulled a small, albeit stylish, method air and sketched her landing by catching her heelside edge, causing her to sit down....
"I was gonna try grabbing method or indy, whatever came first," said Jacobellis. "My front hand came down first, so I tried to grab, but it just didn't work."...
After biffing on the method air landing, Jacobellis jokingly added "As a freestyler, I bow my head in shame."
Chester Allen, who is ironically employed by a paper called the Olympian, thinks the biffing and sitting down is refreshing:
Snowboarding has hit the icy, stuffy Winter Olympics with a big, fat snowball in the face -- and all we can do is smile and hang on for the ride.
The Winter Olympics always has been too tense and tight-lipped. We see ice skaters snivel under pressure, alpine skiers crash under pressure and cross-country skiers blood dope under pressure....
There hasn't been enough pure fun in the games, which is weird, as winter outdoor sports really are all about fun.
That's why we spend big bucks on skiing, skating and sledding.
Well, snowboarders -- always the loopiest group at the ski hill -- have ambled onto the medals podium for the United States six times during these games.
We've gotten to see a lot of toothy smiles, baggy britches, iPod wires and stringy hair.
And all of them -- even the ones who don't win a medal -- are having a ball.
Even Lindsey Jacobellis -- the snowboard cross star who blew a gold medal because she couldn't resist a little showboating during the last jump in her event -- doesn't seem too bent out of shape about her silver medal....
There is no doubt that these snowboarders are athletes -- one 20-foot-high jump off the halfpipe wall, followed by a tumbling, spinning trick and perfect landing shows that.
But you never get the feeling that the boarders are getting up at 6 a.m. for a scientifically designed breakfast, followed with weight training, running and a session strapped into one of those giant gyroscopes that NASA uses to train astronauts for zero gravity.
Nope, I suspect the boarders get up just before the ski lifts start cranking, bolt down a bowl of Lucky Charms -- they're magically delicious -- and yank on the snowboarding pants and sweaters that fell on the floor the night before.
They might stretch before the first run of the day -- or not.
In this age of nutritionists, cross training -- and illegal blood doping and steroids -- it's good to see athletes who just live for their outdoor sport....
Hannah Teter, who won gold in the halfpipe event, plans to staple her medal to the wood walls of her childhood playhouse.
That is very cool....
Go to the halfpipes at any ski area -- Summit at Snoqualmie or Stevens Pass are good places -- and you'll see little kids popping big air and practicing tricks over and over and over.
Few parents or coaches are standing by and hoping for future Olympic glory.
No, it's all about kids having fun with their friends.
Comments
"She could've had the steak but chose the hot dog." (Compare with the San Jose Mercury News.)