The Agony of Defeat

At the 2006 Winter Olympics, Lindsey Jacobellis of the U.S. -- the funky snowboarder with the distinctive blonde perm -- had the gold medal in snowboard cross locked up.. With a huge lead, she tried to grab her board off the last jump, ate it and a Swiss boarder passed her for the gold.

With redemption the name of the game for Lindsey in Vancouver, I headed up to Cypress Mountain for the women's event -- about a 45-minute bus ride outside of Vancouver. The weather was spotty at best to start the day, with a massive fog bank just hanging over the mountain all morning. It caused the competition to be delayed for two hours, but finally it started to lift, as you can see above. Notice the lack of snow on the slopes to the left of the freestyle mogul run. Snow has been a problem in Cypress, where rain and warm weather haven't been kind. Organizers were forced to bring snow down from higher elevations for the mogul course seen here and cover haybales on the halfpipe and snowboard cross tracks.

Waterfalls are everywhere on the drive up to Cypress. This one was right when we unloaded from the media bus for the walk up to the media center.
A shot of Lindsey Jacobellis (22) and her teammate Faye Gulini heading off after their early qualifying runs. Notice the Burton snowpants the American team is sporting -- made to look exactly like jeans..

Here's the finish line of the snowboard cross track itself, as seen from the mix zone, where the competitors walk through to talk with the media after the race.

The one video below is shot during a semifinal run from the mix zone, with gold medalist Maille Ricker of Canada thrilling the home crowd, while the second is of Jacobellis after she again suffered Olympic heartbreak and understandably didn't feel like talking right away.. Here's the link to the story I wrote after the event: http://tiny.cc/qoBZE