LIVIGNO: After winning gold in the women’s snowboard cross, Australian star Josie Baff was cruelly denied the chance to make history with a second just two days later after a costly mistake by her teammate Adam Lambert in the mixed team snowboard cross medal final.
Baff was supreme in the quarter and semi-final, with 2026 World Cup leader Lambert also lifting from a below par performance in the men’s event to ensure a smooth path into the medal final.
By the maths, that gave Australia a 75 per cent chance of adding another medal to the tally, with just four teams competing in the medal final for three spots on the podium. Add the fact that the woman plays the anchor role in the mixed team snowboard cross, which is a relay without the baton change, and you had all the ingredients for more gold for a team that has been breaking new ground in Livigno.
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Lambert stuck to the script for most of his run, making one superb pass after a sluggish start to hold second position halfway down the course. That’s where things started to go wrong.
Adam Lambert clips the board of his rival and falls down in the mixed team final. Nine
First the 28-year-old lost his line into a turn and gave up a position to slip back to third, then fourth. Then, on the home straight, with the field all in close proximity to each other, Lambert attempted to pass Italian rider Lorenzo Sommariva only to have the angle cut off from in front of him. The nose of his board made contact with the tail of the Italian’s and as they came out of the turn, Lambert was spun sideways and unable to stay upright.
The resulting 4-second penalty more or less sealed Australia’s fate, with Baff’s only real hope that the three riders in front of her got in a tangle and allowed her to benefit in a Steven Bradbury type finish. It wasn’t to be.
“I came around turn 5 and I had speed on Lorenzo, the Italian,” Lambert told Australian media, including Wide World of Sports, after the race.
“Just coming over the camel into turn 6, I had to make a decision, well I didn’t actually get to make a decision because the decision was made for me in the air.
“I would have preferred to be on his left but unfortunately I kind of just landed on his right, landed on his tail a little bit, and then I had to go inside in turn 6 and Lorenzo also was as far inside as he could be and my nose mounted his tail and his tail slipped out and as his tail slipped out I lost all contact with my toe-side edge. So that’s what sent me down.”
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Lambert said it had been his strategy just to make it to the bottom of the course close enough to the front to give Baff an opportunity to go for victory. He claimed that he hadn’t moved away from that plan by attempting to pass the Italian.
“I would have been content with fourth there but like I said, as I came over that camel I didn’t have space to move left. I had to take what I was given.
“I know Josie could have taken back half a second, she probably could have taken back a second and a half she’s been riding so well but four seconds is just slightly too much.”
To Baff’s credit she refused to blame Lambert for taking the race out of her hands, instead choosing to praise him for his form resurgence that played a role in getting them into the medal final.
Lambert was among the favourites to win the men’s snowboard cross but he crashed out in the round of 16 after finishing fourth of four riders in his heat.
“I was super happy that I got paired with Lambo, I know how good he is at snowboarding and I was really excited to, I guess, give him an opportunity to showcase that to everybody,” Baff said.
“And I think he did exactly that and I guess in the final going down and having four seconds (to make up), it’s a tough situation to be in but I am still really proud of the two of us and I think we showed everyone what we’re capable of. I don’t think we can be too disappointed.
“Obviously I think we could have won. I really truly believe that we could have had that medal and I guess that stings a little bit but at the same time it’s boardercross and that’s just the unpredictability of the sport and that’s just racing.”
Even starting four seconds back from the competitors from Great Britain (gold), Italy (silver), France (bronze) in the final, Baff is currently so full of confidence that she was still thinking up scenarios to give herself hope.
She felt she was gaining on the three eventual medallists before getting to the home straight but conceded that even her absolute best performance would have come up short.
“As I dropped out of the gate I knew that I was strong and my starts were way better today and I was less nervous, I was kind of going back to my normal starts,” she said.
“It was great, it worked really well in the semis, I was able to reel back that half a second really quickly, so I was like, you know what, anything is possible and I’m going to trust that these three in front of me might have some contact lower down and I want to be in that race if anything does happen. I guess that was the mindset here and I don’t ever give up, not until I crossed that line, but yeah, I kind of went in with that and I was getting closer, I could see I was getting closer.
“I could see them exiting the turn as I was entering the turn and I was thinking this could still work and I knew if I closed that gap a little bit more I could get a sling shot, so yeah I was hoping for that but unfortunately four seconds is a long time”
Baff finished 3.42 seconds behind the winner, making her time 0.20 of a second quicker than the British rider Charlotte Bankes who started the women’s leg second and overtook France in an impressive pass for victory.
Lambert said he was hoping to salvage something from the wreckage by continuing to set the pace in the World Cup series and win the season’s Crystal Globe.
He said he wouldn’t know until he had more time to dwell on his error whether it would be a regret that would haunt him.
“Maybe it’s too soon to tell,” he said. “I may, I may not. I have lots of other goals when it comes to my sport, like Josie said Crystal Globe is high on that list and I am leading the World Cup overall, so my attention will definitely be shifting towards that going forward, we have five races left.
“Like I said earlier though, Olympic final, that’s a beautiful thing to be out here representing your country and get so far into an event. Fourth place is just short of the medals but it’s fourth place, it’s still very good.”
Australia’s other team of Jarryd Hughes and Mia Clift were eliminated in the semi final, before finishing last in the small final for an eighth placed result.
Hughes, who won a snowboard cross silver medal at Pyeongchang 2018 admitted he was considering retirement after struggling to snowboard “on one foot” due to a debilitating injury after he shattered the navicular bone in his left foot in March last year in a shocking car crash-like incident in the quarter-final of a World Cup event in Canada.
“I’m going to assess how everything is from here, but this will probably be my last Olympics and we’ll go from here,” the 30-year-old conceded after praising Clift’s efforts for carrying him through the mixed event.