Too old for gold? Not this duo
Baumgartner, 40, Jacobellis, 36, team up for snowboardcross victory
The running joke was American snowboardcross racer Nick Baumgartner always referring to them as a pair of 40-somethings.
“I’m 36,” Lindsey Jacobellis playfully corrected time after time in interview after interview.
For these two, and all their vast experience, age proved to be one thing — golden.
Jacobellis won her second title of the Beijing Olympics, teaming with Baumgartner to capture the new event of mixed team snowboardcross on Saturday. At 40 years, 57 days, Baumgartner, the concrete worker/contractor from Michigan, becomes the oldest snowboarder to win an Olympic medal. At 36 years, 177 days, Jacobellis, the author of a new children’s book, is the second-oldest.
“You’re never too late to take what you want from life,” Baumgartner said. “You let yourself down if you quit too early, doesn’t matter how old you are. Our success at our age is a perfect example of that.”
Jacobellis took gold earlier this week in the women’s event; it came 16 years after a late showboat move as she was cruising in for an apparent win cost her the title at the Turin Games.
“It’s the internal fire in believing in yourself, whether you’re trying to go get a gold medal or
just improving your day-to-day life,” said Jacobellis.
Although the unique snowboarding discipline is making its Olympic debut in China, the event has been featured for nearly a decade at numerous World Cup stops. It features a male and
female rider from the same country being paired up and placed into a multi-team bracket. When the male racer crosses the line, the time advantage he holds over the next competitor is applied to his female teammate. The female rider then begins the run and the top two teams advance round by round until the final.
Baumgartner gave Jacobellis a slender lead after his run in the final. Jacobellis, of course, closed it out. They held off the Italian team of Omar Visintin and Michela Moioli by O.2 seconds.
The Canadian duo of Eliot Grondin and Meryeta O’Dine finished third after O’Dine was able to scramble back up and get to the line first following an early-in the race wipeout with another Italian team. The bronze-medal winning team finished 23.20 seconds behind the time of Jacobellis and Baumgartner.
Shortly after Jacobellis’ finish, Baumgartner went over for a gold-medal worthy embrace. Later, the American tandem grabbed hands and stepped on the podium when their names were announced.
“We’ve definitely been through a lot and we’ve seen each other’s ups and downs and our struggles,” Jacobellis said. “So to be able to come together and work as a team, and learn from each other on how the courses were changing with speed, I thought we did great.”