Styling price: gold

The leader's unnecessary stunt led to a stumble and silver.
KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
BARDONECCHIA, Italy -- For Lindsey Jacobellis, there is shame in silver.
She was gliding down the mountain, seconds away from snagging an Olympic gold medal, when mood struck for a little celebratory styling.
The move is called "backside method grab" in snowboard cross terminology, best explained by trying to catch the back edge of your snowboard.
Our hosts in Italy have a better explanation:
Stupido.
As Jacobellis stumbled to regain her balance, Tanja Frieden of Switzerland closed fast from 100 yards out, passing her on the way to the finish line Friday afternoon.
Spin control
At first Jacobellis tried a bit of spin control, insisting she was trying to "create stability" heading into the final jump in the women's final.
Her shaky explanation might have worked, but a number of sophisticated observers continued pressing her about the logic of trying the move that appeared to be unnecessary.
Despite holding firm in the initial press conference, she would finally admit her faux pas in a media teleconference later in the day.
"I always style when I go over the jump," she said, "but I was really excited. I definitely was caught up in the moment and forgot I still had to race. At least I didn't t miss out on a medal.
"I have the first silver for snowboard cross ever. So you have to give me something."
Lett-down
With no connection to anyone else in Olympic history for such a gaffe, Jacobellis conjured up the foolish ghost of Leon Lett, who began a celebratory strut on his way for a score in Super Bowl XXVII until Buffalo's Don Bebe chased him down. Bebe stripped Lett of the ball and prevent the Cowboys from scoring a record 59 points.
At least Lett's Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl.
Jacobellis, 20, now stands alone as someone who handed a gold medal to her competitor.
As she did, U.S. Snowboarding Coach Peter Foley covered his face and then fell to the ground in disbelief.
"I was just bummed for her," Foley said. "I don't know if she held on too long," She felt like that was a stable position for her and it didn't work."
Hot dog finish
Soaring on her next-to-last jump in the event final, Jacobellis lost her balance and went tumbling outside the blue line. She finished the race, but only after Frieden breezed by her to the finish line.
"I was coming to the last turn and I was already super-stoked just to get silver but I knew to concentrate because it's never finished," Frieden, who recently turned 30, said. "All of a sudden I saw her crashing and I was like, 'woah!' "
Jacobellis' move wasn't completely out of character in snowboarding, a sport that has made a nice transition to the mainstream mix of Olympic sports and connects with a younger generation.
But style has its limitations, and her gold medal gaffe cost her, among other things, $10,000 in the difference between silver and gold awarded by the United States Olympic Committee for athletes who medal.
"Jacobellis is not the first to hot dog it off the final jump, and she probably won't be the last," freestyle skiing analyst Nikki Stone, who won a gold medal in aerials at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games, wrote in a column on yahoo.com.
It had been a wild ride down the mountain for the four finalists, who had survived qualifying heats to gain a berth in the final.
In the opening seconds, Canada's Maelle Ricker caught her backside edge on a landing and smacked her back and head onto the ground. She was taken off the course on a stretcher and flown to a hospital in Turin, although she was released with no major injuries.
Jacobellis established a cushy lead after Canada's Dominique Maltais lost her balance and careened into the netting after a jump, and Frieden got caught up in traffic early in the run.
"All of a sudden Lindsey has this insane lead," Foley said. "I was screaming at the TV, 'keep racing! keep racing!' because you see it all the time. You think you have it won by a mile and something goes wrong."
Something went wrong Friday afternoon. And no matter how you spin it, we get back to one plausible explanation of what happened on the mountain.
Stupido.