In her first Olympic final since winning silver in the 2006 debut of snowboard cross in Italy, the 10-time X Games medalist and five-time world champion pulled up oh-so-slightly over the final jump to avoid a fallen rider. Mere feet from the finish line, maybe that cost her the .04 seconds she needed to find bronze.

“If I didn’t really have that, who knows? Maybe I could have snuck in a for medal, but at the end of the day, I want to be safe and not blow my knee or get injured again,” said the 32-year-old Vermont pioneer of snowboard cross who led for the first half of the dramatic final. “This is definitely the only thing I have not won, but it����ap not something that����ap going to define me.”

In yet another thrilling final race, America’s best hope for a women’s snowboard cross medal finished fourth, just as her American teammate Nick Baumgartner did Wednesday. The PyeongChang Olympics marks the first time American snowboard cross athletes have failed to medal since the 2006 Games. Italy’s Michela Moioli won gold ahead of France’s Julia Pereira de Sousa Mabileau. The Czech Republic’s Eva Samkova, who won gold in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, took bronze, again racing with a painted mustache on her lip.

It����ap rare to be consistent in Olympic snowboard cross racing. It����ap a capricious sport, where any of the six-at-a-time racers can eke out a win. Of the 24 Olympic snowboard cross medals men and women have won since 2006, only four athletes have won two. The jumps and berms in the winding Olympic courses can often overshadow even the most obvious talent. Winners often get lucky.

And Jacobellis hasn’t found that once-every-four-years Olympic break like she did in 2006.

“I finished the best I could today. If we ran the race tomorrow, it could be a whole different story. It����ap the winner of this day and it doesn’t define me as an athlete,” she said. “I’ve been doing this sport for 20 years and that����ap a lot longer than some of these girls have been alive.”

Her younger teammates, Eagle’s Meghan Tierney and three-time Olympian Faye Gulini of Utah, were unable to advance beyond Friday’s first quarterfinal heat. Their teammate Rosie Mancari injured her ankles in training and did not compete on Friday.

Tierney, 21, got close to advancing out of her quarterfinal, falling on the third-to-last step-up jump. She was 11 when Jacobellis started coaching her at camps at Oregon’s Mt. Hood and counts Jacobellis as a mentor.

“She’s really helped me get to where I am,” said Tierney, who said a little prayer in the starting gate to her grandfather, her tireless supporter who passed a couple months ago.

“He was very tough and he knew I could be just as tough as him.”

Tierney remembers watching Jacobellis in Italy’s 2006 Olympics and she felt a spark to race snowboards. That was the year Jacobellis won her silver. Which wasn’t really a victory. She had the gold in sight when, with a long lead, she flashed a bit of style with a tweak and grab on the penultimate hit and fell. That notorious method grab has haunted her ever since. The sour silver comes up every Olympics and she has to answer a steady stream of questions about the now 12-year-old mistake.

“How often do you remember the second-place medalist,” she said, laughing but not really stoked to be talking about that decision to showboat she made in a race in 2006.

She has spent her career since that moment becoming the most decorated athlete in snowboard cross racing, winning five of the last seven world championships. Later this season she is hosting the first-ever all-women snowboard cross at the event at California’s Bear Mountain. She hopes the event seeds a new generation of snowboard cross women who can follow her path.

There’s no question Jacobellis has left her mark on snowboard cross. Even if her highlight reel includes the not-so-flattering grab that lost gold.

“If nothing else, it gave my sport a ton of recognition,” Gulini said. “When I tell people what I do, the first thing they say ‘Is that the sport where the girl threw away the gold medal?’ And I’m like, ‘at least you know what I do.’ There are a lot of athletes whose results don’t measure up to who they are and I think she has done incredibly. She’s the best at this sport. I think she’s doing just fine despite that mistake.”

The 242-athlete U.S. Olympic Team heading to PyeongChang is the largest delegation from any nation in the history of the Winter Olympics. Colorado, the ski capital of the nation, is sending more athletes than any other state to the Winter Games, with 23 men and 13 women competing in 17 disciplines. Nineteen of those athletes will be competing in their first Olympics.

Colorado is home to three Olympic halfpipe skiers, three moguls skiers, three Nordic combined skiers, three Super-G skiers, three snowboard cross racers, three hockey players, three slalom skiers, two slopestyle and big air snowboarders, and two halfpipe snowboarders.

Red Gerard, the 17-year-old snowboard slopestyle phenom from Silverthorne, is the youngest U.S. Olympic Team athlete from Colorado and Crested Butte slalom skier David Chodounsky is the veteran at age 33.

The U.S. Olympic Team will be looking for its 100th gold medal in PyeongChang, with the count currently at 96. In the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Coloradans accounted for three of America’s 28 medals, with Mikaela Shiffrin earning gold, Gus Kenworthy earning silver and Boulder’s Alex Deibold grabbing bronze.

Here’s a look at the Colorado athletes (Tap on their names for more details):

Alpine skiing
David Chodounsky, Crested Butte
Wiley Maple, Aspen
Alice McKennis, New Castle
Sarah Schleper, Vail
Mikaela Shiffrin, EagleVail
Lindsey Vonn, Vail

Biathlon
Joanne Reid, Boulder

Bobsled
Lauren Gibbs, Denver
Nathan Weber, Pueblo West

Cross country
Simi Hamilton, Aspen
Noah Hoffman, Aspen

Freestyle skiing
Casey Andringa, Boulder
Aaron Blunck, Crested Butte
Chris Del Bosco, Vail
Alex Ferreira, Aspen
Tess Johnson, Edwards
Jaelin Kauf, Vail
Gus Kenworthy, Telluride
Keaton McCargo, Telluride
Torin Yater-Wallace, Basalt

Ice hockey
Nicole Hensley, Lakewood
Troy Terry, Highlands Ranch
Mike Testwuide, Vail

Nordic combined
Ben Berend, Steamboat Springs
Bryan Fletcher, Steamboat Springs
Taylor Fletcher, Steamboat Springs
Jasper Good, Steamboat Springs

Skeleton
Katie Uhlaender, Breckenridge

Snowboard
Chris Corning, Silverthorne
Mick Dierdorff, Steamboat Springs
Red Gerard, Silverthorne
Arielle Gold, Steamboat Springs
Hagan Kearney, Telluride

Kyle Mack, Silverthorne
Jake Pates, Eagle
Meghan Tierney, Edwards

Speciality: Snowboard cross

Age: 21

Growing up chasing an older brother who competed in snowboard slopestyle, 21-year-old snowboard cross racer Tierney quickly developed skills beyond her years. After recovering from a back injury in late 2016, Tierney entered this season a long-shot to make the Olympic team, led by veteran Lindsey Jacobellis. She steadily improved, finding a career-best seventh at the final Olympic qualifying contests in Turkey in January that won her a spot on U.S. Snowboarding’s four-women snowboard cross team.

Competing: Feb. 16.