Bardonecchia, Italy ? Alone in the clear, Lindsey Jacobellis practically could have crawled to the finish line and won.

After an Olympic-sized flub, she probably wishes she had.

Coasting to what should have been a runaway victory Friday, the 20-year-old American grabbed her board on the second-to-last jump before the finish line. Inexplicably – and some say inexcusably – she fell.

“I was caught up in the moment,” Jacobellis said.

While Jacobellis scrambled to her feet, Switzerland’s Tanja Frieden caught up and sped past Jacobellis to become the first champion in the strange and wild sport of Olympic women’s snowboard cross. Jacobellis settled for silver.

Then, the debate began.

“She definitely styled that a little too hard,” U.S. snowboarding coach Peter Foley said, after looking at a frame-by-frame breakdown of the jump taken by Associated Press photographers.

Jacobellis was so far ahead as she approached the fateful jump that Frieden couldn’t even be seen in the early frames of the AP photo breakdown.

So, the question is, should Jacobellis have gone for the so-called “backside method grab” she attempted at the end – a trick she rarely tries and one that included a flashy 60-degree twist right in front of the grandstands?

American Lindsey Jacobellis who was leading in the final of the Women's Snowboard Cross competition, lands after the second to last jump, a split-second before crashing in sight of the finish line at the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Bardonecchia, Italy, Friday, Feb. 17, 2006. Tanja Frieden of Switzerland won the race to take the gold medal, Jacobellis finished second to take the silver medal, and Dominique Maltais of Canada bronze.

To many, it was blatant hot-dogging. In the moments after the race, Jacobellis insisted it was pretty much standard operating procedure and that she did it only to “create stability.”

A few hours later, in a conference call, she held to that point, but also conceded there might have been some showboating going on.

“I was having fun,” she said. “Snowboarding is fun. I was ahead. I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd. I messed up. Oh well, it happens.”

She went tumbling after the jump, which she had executed cleanly in her four previous runs through qualifying and the early rounds of finals.

Foley fell to the ground in shock. Jacobellis’ family and friends, dressed in funky red-white-and-blue hats in the stands, stared at the finish line with their mouths agape.

“She just tweaked it too hard,” Foley said. “Definite styling on that jump. That’s a good stable grab, but she pulled it across too far, definitely, for it to be safe.”

Of course, even the most rigid of riders would admit that snowboarding is about style. Jacobellis fits that mold. She was ubiquitous on Visa commercials back in the States, has done her fair share of photo shoots and doesn’t shirk from the publicity that comes with being one of America’s stars in the sport.

In the leadup to the Olympics, Jacobellis also had dreams of competing in the halfpipe, where the kind of grab that cost her on the snowboard cross course is much more common.

American Lindsey Jacobellis who was leading in the final of the Women's Snowboard Cross competition, crashes in sight of the finish at the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Bardonecchia, Italy, Friday, Feb. 17, 2006. Tanja Frieden of Switzerland won the race to take the gold medal, Jacobellis finished second to take the silver medal, and Dominique Maltais of Canada bronze.

So, trying to finish with flair might not have seemed so out of line, especially given the lead she had.

As she approached the fateful jump, Jacobellis had a bigger lead than anyone in any heat, men’s or women’s, in two days of racing in the newest, wildest sport on the Olympic program.

All over but the shouting, they say.

“But sometimes,” Maltais said, “things like this happen in snowboard cross.”

And because of it, Jacobellis had a lot of explaining to do.