Cross, Women

A popular snowboarding event, which had been highlighted during ESPN’s X-Games, boardercross consists of several skiers (usually four) competing on the same race course at the same time, in a match racing format. For the Olympics, 23 boarders started, with 16 advancing to the match racing and the quarter-finals. In the match racing, the top two racers in each heat moved on to the next round. The qualifying round consisted of two runs, with the best run of the two used to determine placements. Losing semi-finalists raced off for 5th-8th places, while classification races were also held to determine the 9th-12th places and the 13th-16th places. The heavy favorite in women’s boardercross was American Lindsey Jacobellis, who had won the gold medal in the event at the last three X-Games. She qualified only third, as Canada’s Maëlle Ricker dominated with her second run, leading the qualifying by almost 1½ seconds over her teammate, Dominique Maltais. All three would comfortably advance to the final where they were joined by Swiss boarder Tanja Frieden. In the final, Jacobellis was leading for most of the race, coming to the last jump with a three-second lead over Frieden. But Jacobellis then hot dogged it, going for a twisting grab, and fell. Frieden passed her for the gold medal, but Jacobellis was able to recover for the silver. Jacobellis noted, “Snowboarding is fun. I was having fun.”