Team Cross, Mixed

The mixed team cross in snowboarding was a new Olympic event at Beijing 2022. It had débuted at the 2019 World Championships, won by the American team of Mick Dierdorff and Lindsey Jacobellis with Italy’s Omar Visintin and Michela Moioli taking silver. The event consisted of teams of one man and one woman. The men start out and as they finish the timer triggers the starting gate for that respective team’s women who then race to the line to decide the placements.

Fifteen teams competed at Beijing from 10 nations, with Australia, Canada, France, Italy, and the United States entering two teams. Only Italy advanced two teams to the semi-finals, with Visintin / Moioli winning heat one and Lorenzo Sommariva and Caterina Carpano taking the second semi. Joining them in the final was the United States with Jacobellis now competing with fourth-time Olympian Nick Baumgartner and the Canadian pair of Éliot Grondin and Meryeta O’Dine. Jacobellis, Grondin, and Visintin were fresh off medals in individual cross, with Jacobellis winning gold three days before and Grondin and Visintin winning silver and bronze respectively two days prior.

In the final Jacobellis started wave two with a 0.04 second lead given to her by Baumgartner, but early in wave two Moioli went ahead only to see Jacobellis re-take the lead on a late turn and hold on for the gold medal by 0.20 seconds. Visintin / Moioli took silver and Grondin / O’Dine finished third.

Baumgartner’s gold medal at 40-years-old (40-057) made him the oldest Olympic snowboarding champion ever, while Jacobellis’s gold at 36-177 extended her record as the oldest female gold medalist in Olympic snowboarding. Jacobellis’s two gold medals made her only the second snowboarder to win two gold medals at a single Olympic Winter Games, after Vic Wild (RUS) won parallel slalom and parallel giant slalom at Sochi 2014.