[article] You Go, Lindsey
Recently the NYTimes had an editorial about Lindsey Jacobellis's fall. In support of having fun snowboarding, I've copied it here or orig:
The sports world was buzzing yesterday about Lindsey Jacobellis's Olympic moment. The young American snowboarder seemed to have clinched the gold medal in the snowboardcross when she tried to get fancy on her next-to-last jump, crash-landed and scrambled miserably to her feet as Tanja Frieden of Switzerland blew by her to win the gold. Besides a silver, Ms. Jacobellis won an instantaneous reputation as a showboater who "got what she deserved," in the words of one sports commentator.
As she explained later, the flamboyant spirit of snowboarding had chosen a bad time to express itself. "I was having fun," she said. "Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh, well, it happens."
To the uninitiated, snowboardcross looks like a combination of roller derby and surfing. It's hard to imagine anybody regarding the outcome as a matter of life or death. Perhaps that's why its athletes, like the other snowboarders at the games, seem to be stealing the show with their cheerful good humor. Meanwhile, the potential champions in sports like figure skating grimly go about their business, trying to pretend that it's all for the love of the sport, that the whole world isn't watching, that a king's ransom in endorsements doesn't hang in the balance.
At times, the atmosphere gets downright gloomy. When the American figure skater Johnny Weir missed the bus to the rink, he got upset and skated badly, and finished without a medal. "I didn't feel my aura," he said. "Inside I was black." Meanwhile, the Russian skater Yevgeni Plushenko accepted his gold medal with a stone-faced stare, "looking completely unamused," as The Times's Juliet Macur reported. "I tell the truth, this is my dream, yeah, and I am so happy," Mr. Plushenko said unconvincingly. "Believe me, I am so happy."
Meanwhile, Ms. Jacobellis had an amazing race, built a huge lead, got exuberant and went splat. What did she think these were - Games?
The sports world was buzzing yesterday about Lindsey Jacobellis's Olympic moment. The young American snowboarder seemed to have clinched the gold medal in the snowboardcross when she tried to get fancy on her next-to-last jump, crash-landed and scrambled miserably to her feet as Tanja Frieden of Switzerland blew by her to win the gold. Besides a silver, Ms. Jacobellis won an instantaneous reputation as a showboater who "got what she deserved," in the words of one sports commentator.
As she explained later, the flamboyant spirit of snowboarding had chosen a bad time to express itself. "I was having fun," she said. "Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh, well, it happens."
To the uninitiated, snowboardcross looks like a combination of roller derby and surfing. It's hard to imagine anybody regarding the outcome as a matter of life or death. Perhaps that's why its athletes, like the other snowboarders at the games, seem to be stealing the show with their cheerful good humor. Meanwhile, the potential champions in sports like figure skating grimly go about their business, trying to pretend that it's all for the love of the sport, that the whole world isn't watching, that a king's ransom in endorsements doesn't hang in the balance.
At times, the atmosphere gets downright gloomy. When the American figure skater Johnny Weir missed the bus to the rink, he got upset and skated badly, and finished without a medal. "I didn't feel my aura," he said. "Inside I was black." Meanwhile, the Russian skater Yevgeni Plushenko accepted his gold medal with a stone-faced stare, "looking completely unamused," as The Times's Juliet Macur reported. "I tell the truth, this is my dream, yeah, and I am so happy," Mr. Plushenko said unconvincingly. "Believe me, I am so happy."
Meanwhile, Ms. Jacobellis had an amazing race, built a huge lead, got exuberant and went splat. What did she think these were - Games?