Limping olympia

When that race was over, her coach Peter Foley covered his mouth with his hands and fell to the ground. Her friends and relatives stopped waving their American flags.

It had happened in 1986 when friends and relatives and the television public watched the Challenger explode. Victory roared up to an airless gasp in one millisecond of techno-phantasm, spiraling off into blue screen.

Fast forward 1.5 decades. You are living out the American dream: love conquers all and eco-military prowess conquers the agape holdouts. A co-worker murmurs in the hallway, they think we're under attack, two planes just rammed the twin towers in New York. Lips frozen mid greeting, brain torn up in impossible meanings, you follow the coach to his knees.

Lindsey Jacobellis was supposed to win the gold. For us! For all the non-snowboarding klutzes who love to stand on that top block with her, our white smiles and sculpted bodies quivering in the wind. It's a tradition by now which, Ms. Jacobellis has found, you mess with, you bring on the scorn of the masses. She has been grilled, psychoanalyzed, insulted:

Lindsey Jacobellis had gold within her reach. Instead she went for one last roar from the crowd, stupidly trying a flashy trick when all she needed to do was slide down the hill.

So say the pundits: All you needed to do, NASA geniuses, was get those O-rings seated right before blast off. All you needed to do, CIA honchos, was coordinate your vaulted intelligence with your potent mainframes. And all you had to do, Lindsay J, was slide down the hill... you robbed us of our gold with your last minute tricks, wounded us with your pride. And if there's one thing we can't stand around here, it's hubris.

Ask Jack. Ask Jill. Ask the Greeks. There's tragedy at the foot of that hill.