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Tag: snowboard

  • Lindsey Jacobellis Tries, Falls Again

    Bad luck seems to hound Team USA snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis every time she takes a shot at Olympic gold. She has tried twice before the Sochi Games: in Turin in 2006, and Vancouver in 2010. The gold was hers for the taking in Turin, until an unnecessary trick made her fall, and she went home with the silver instead. During the semifinals in Vancouver, she crashed into a gate and was disqualified.

    For Jacobellis, the phrase “third time lucky” just didn’t apply to her, when she overshot a landing during this year’s Olympic semifinal round. Her miscalculated landing resulted in a nasty fall. She recovered but there was no way to catch up.

    It was an awfully bad stroke of luck, since she had actually posted the second-fastest time during the event’s time trial held at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park. Though her Olympics reputation shows otherwise, she really is an exceptional athlete. To date, she has won a total of eight gold medals in the X Games.

    Jacobellis wipes out in Turin 2006

    Jacobellis, however, isn’t being superstitious about not winning a gold medal at Sochi.  She believes what happened was “just a fluke”. Considering what happened eight years ago, she had already braced herself for how people would take the news of her loss. She knows some people will be disappointed and might even act negatively. She thinks some may have even been expecting to see her fail once again.

    “People don’t understand how much pressure is put on her,” said snowboarder Faye Gulini of Team USA. Gulini is well aware of the extreme pressure that gets placed on prominent athletes, and she knows how difficult it must be for her teammate.

    Jacobellis took things in stride this time, and said that there are worse things in life than not winning. Naysayers will say what they want, but Lindsey Jacobellis maintains a positive attitude and looks toward the future.

    Image via YouTube

     

  • Four Dead in Avalanches, Twitter Reaction

    Four Dead in Avalanches, Twitter Reaction

    An avalanche claimed the lives of three skiers in an out-of-bounds area of Stevens Pass Ski Resort near Skykomish, WA on Sunday. A snowboarder died in a separate avalanche at The Summit at Snoqualmie in nearby Easton, WA, less than an hour earlier.

    During the Stevens Pass tragedy, professional skier Elyse Saugstad recalls hearing her friend shout “avalanche!,” according to the Seattle Times. “The next thing I knew I was taking more than a 2,000-foot ride down an avalanche, tumbling and turning and tossing the entire way,” she added. Saugstad came to a halt with her face exposed – this was not the case for three of her friends. In what has been described as Washington’s deadliest avalanche in years, the three expert skiers were swept away and suffocated. Fifteen skiers in all were hit, and families confirmed that among the dead are Chris Rudolph, 30, the marketing director for Stevens; and Jim Jack, 46, of Leavenworth, a freeskiing judge. The third victim has not yet been identified as of Sunday night. Just before the avalanche at Steven’s Pass, an unnamed snowboarder, also in an out-of-bounds area at The Summit at Snoqualmie, triggered a different avalanche, and was swept 500 feet over a cliff, according to the King County, WA Sheriff’s Office.

    Saugstad, who sometimes skis in Europe, where inflatable emergency air bags are popular, had her own, and activated it, as the avalanche was occurring. Below is a video of an inflatable device of the same design being put to use:

    Another skier grabbed onto a tree, and was able to keep his head above the snow. The skiers who’d died ended up being buried deep, with one of them being located very close to where Saugstad ended up. Megan Michelson, freeskiing editor for ESPN, who was also part of the group, states that as the avalanche calmed, she began skiing back and forth, using her snow beacon to try to get signals from the emergency beacons of the buried skiers. Those who weren’t injured were digging and attempting to administer CPR, but it was too late.

    Here are some Twitter reactions: