Unforgiving: Lessons from the Fall

Olympic gold medalist Jacobellis traces the arc of her snowboarding career in this inspiring ode to self-forgiveness. She opens by describing her elation during a 2022 White House ceremony after she won two gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, before addressing “the elephant in the room”: in 2006, when Jacobellis was 20 years old and enjoying a comfortable lead in the home stretch of the women’s snowboardcross finals, she fell and lost the race. She characterizes the mistake as “one of the biggest unforced errors in sports—an achingly ugly result that would stand as a constant reminder of what might have been.” In flashbacks, including to her childhood in Connecticut and Vermont, when she first became enamored with winter sports, Jacobellis provides context for both the fall itself and the life lessons she drew on to overcome her embarrassment about the incident. Ultimately, Jacobellis resolved to continue racing despite constant public scrutiny about her mistake and, at age 36, she became the oldest U.S. female athlete to ever win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. This forthright account of Jacobellis’s rebound from public humiliation should win her new admirers. Agent: Robert Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (Oct.)