USA Wins Gold Medal for Mixed Team Snowboarding Cross Small at 2022 Winter Olympics

The United States is the first-ever Olympic gold medalist in mixed team snowboard cross.

The pair of Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner defeated two Italian teams and Canada in the final of Friday's event at the 2022 Beijing Games. Canada won the bronze, while the Italian pair of Michela Moioli and Omar Visintin won silver.

Jacobellis caught Moioli in the stretch run of the final race to win the United States' fifth gold in dramatic fashion.

This was the Olympic debut for the mixed team snowboard cross, which used a bracket-style format starting with four quarterfinal heats. The top two finishers in each quarterfinal advanced to the semifinals, and the top two finishers in each semifinal advanced to the big final, which determined the medals.

NBC Olympics' Liam Nee explained the format of each race, noting "Men go first, and once a team's male athlete has crossed the finish, the start gate opens for his female teammate. The women's outcome determines the result."

The biggest storyline from an American perspective was Jacobellis' attempt to win a second gold in Beijing after taking home the United States' first gold medal of the Games in the women's individual event.

She paired with a two-time world medalist in Baumgartner on one American team, while four-time Olympian Faye Gulini and 2018 junior world champion Jake Vedder made up the other.

Everyone figured to be chasing Italy with 2018 individual gold medalist Moioli and 2022 individual bronze medalist Visintin.

That Italian team had no trouble advancing by winning the first quarterfinal run, while Jacobellis' squad won the second quarterfinal. Unfortunately for the Americans, Gulini and Vedder were eliminated in the third one, which the athletes of the Russian Olympic Committee won. Great Britain won the fourth one.

To the surprise of nobody, Moioli's Italian team and Jacobellis' American squad reached the final. They were joined by the other Italian team of Lorenzo Sommariva and Caterina Carpano and Canada's pair of Eliot Grondin and Meryeta Odine in the final.

It was fitting that the Italians and Americans squared off for gold with Baumgartner staking his teammate to a narrow lead. Jacobellis temporarily lost that lead but was able to come back in the second half of the course to take home another gold.