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Sweet redemption for Jacobellis

Nate Peterson
Aspen Correspondent
Vail, CO Colorado
Jordan Curet The Aspen Times
ALL | The Aspen Times

ASPEN ” “What’s does redemption mean?” Swiss boadercrosser Tanja Frieden innocently asked on Saturday while looking directly at Lindsey Jacobellis.

Jacobellis, fresh off winning her fourth Winter X Games gold medal in boardercross, looked back at Frieden ” the silver medalist ” and launched into an explanation of the English word.

Midway through her sentence, however, Jacobellis gave up.



Personally, she wasn’t thinking about redemption Saturday ” even though everyone else seemed to be cramming it down her throat ” so why bring it up?

The uber-talent who infamously blew a chance at Olympic gold in 2006 for showboating on the boardercross course’s final jump, Jacobellis experienced deja vu of her Italian knightmare last year at Buttermilk. She caught her edge while landing off the final jump, spun around and fell hard, handing a win to Californian Joanie Anderson.

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Saturday, in the starting gate of yet another final, Jacobellis said she could hear the clip of the debacle being played on the Buttermilk Jumbotron over and over.

“It’s so funny, because all you hear up at the top of the course is, ‘Oh, she’s up for redemption.’ I’m like, ‘Actually, no. I could care less,'” said Jacobellis, who held off Frei and bronze medalist Sandra Frei, also of Switzerland, for the win. “[The past] has nothing to do with it. If I didn’t do well at this event, it would just go out the door and I’d just focus on the next event. Focusing on a past event really isn’t going to do any good.”

Spoken like a true champion. Or someone who’s sick of the media honing in on two painful mistakes, instead of her substantially longer list of accomplishments.

“Most people don’t follow the World Cup circuit, so they really don’t know what’s going on in my life,” said Jacobellis, the defending boardercross world champion. “They just see this and they just run over things from last year. I can hear you guys play the clip over and over and over. I think all my sponsors should just be raking in all the money, because there’s so many takes of me just falling.”

npeterson@aspentimes.com


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