NEW YORK — Lindsey Jacobellis said she has more to give to snowboard cross, and that may include a trip to a fourth Olympics in 2018.
“The sport is constantly evolving, and it’s something that I still want to be a part of and I love doing,” Jacobellis said last week at the Times Square premiere of “SBX the Movie,” a snowboard documentary she played a role in. “It’s definitely not, oh, this didn’t work out, just bag it and scrap it and do something else. I know I have more life in this sport. I don’t want to just stop for any apparent reason. I want to almost do it until I cannot do it anymore, physically.”
Jacobellis, 29, was eliminated in the semifinals at a second straight Olympics in Sochi, another disappointment for arguably the greatest female rider in the sport’s short history.
She is best known for leading near the end of the first Olympic snowboard cross final in 2006, falling on a trick move and settling for a silver medal in Torino.
She feels more relaxed coming out of the Sochi Winter Games than four and eight years ago.
“There’s not that same disappointment from when I was very young, after 2006, and then the ‘redemption’ [uses air quotes] all about 2010 and that didn’t go through,” said Jacobellis, who has said she probably would have retired had she won gold in 2006. “This is moreso about, it didn’t happen, but moving on and onto the next.”
Jacobellis also owns the X Games female record of eight gold medals, three World Championship gold medals and two World Cup season crowns.
“It would be nice to get those titles again,” she said going into this season, which begins with a World Cup in Austria in December.
Jacobellis doesn’t have the increased commitments of an Olympic season, nor the obstacles she had for most of 2012 and 2013, coming back from major knee surgeries.
The Vermont native spent this past summer moving into a new home in California, surfing and then training in Argentina with countryman Hagen Kearney, an old coach and new boards.
She’s taking it easy.
“It’s good to have that balance because the Olympic year is always so intense,” Jacobellis said. “To tone it down a notch and remember why you love the sport. It makes you kind of start fresh going into another season.”
