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Just to add to Jon Weisman's admirably bristling take from this morning — "I want my kids to be like her" — Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski blogs his thoughts on the media's disappointment over snowboard champion Lindsey Jacobellis falling short of a medal at the Vancouver Olympics.
One thing you have to understand about covering the Olympics is that when you get caught up in them as a writer, you lose perspective. You can’t help it. For three weeks, you live nothing but Olympics. You hardly follow what’s happening in the outside world. You go to sleep thinking about Olympics, and you wake up (usually about three hours later) thinking about Olympics, and your restless dreams are often about the Olympics too. Good moments become great, and great moments become legendary, and legendary moments become … well, whatever is the word beyond legendary. Blunders become catastrophes....That’s how it goes at the Olympics. Perspective gets lost, and exhaustion obliterates shades of gray, misunderstandings explode into controversies, and we as writers often try to find grand life lessons in the oddest places. In Torino, Lindsey’s Jacoblunder came to represent a clash of cultures. How dare she! These are the Olympic Games! Kids today have no respect!
Also: Yeah she's pretty and has great hair, but this photo says so much more about Jacobellis. Credit to Adrian Dennis / AFP/Getty Images, posted at NPR.com, where Linda Holmes also pooh-poohs the redemption angle to the Jacobellis story.