If youth defined Lindsey Jacobellis’ Olympic debut, experience has become her strength 16 years later.

The 36-year-old from Danbury, Conn., is no longer making mistakes that a 20-year-old might. Instead, she and fellow veteran Nick Baumgartner (with 76 years between them) are demonstrating at the Beijing Olympics that wrongs can be righted, either years or days later. Frustrating Olympic careers have become golden.

On a snowy day in Zhangjiakou, China, that slowed the tracks and made just staying upright a challenge, Jacobellis and Baumgartner were the last ones standing Saturday. Snowboarders from Canada and Italy went down in the final, and Jacobellis held off Italy’s Michela Moioli in a dramatic mixed team snowboard cross finish for the gold.

“We’re ’80s babies. We came in hot today,” Jacobellis said on the NBC telecast.

Baumgartner, 40, had been both without a medal and frustrated in his fourth Olympics. For the first heats, Team USA just asked him to keep the race close. In the inaugural event that asks for speed — no style, no technique, no flips — the men went first and the women followed in staggered fashion.

“I can’t tell you how much pressure’s off you when you know you got someone like Lindsey in the gate after you,” Baumgartner said.

But in the final, Baumgartner gave Jacobellis a slight lead. Jacobellis lost the advantage early, made a late move on Moioli by getting the inside track, then had just enough momentum to cross the line first.

“Way to ride. That was beautiful,” Baumgartner could be heard telling Jacobellis as they hugged. Jacobellis had been the oldest gold medalist at these Games. Her partner now owns that distinction.

Until these Games, Jacobellis might have been best remembered by Olympic fans for her mistake at the 2006 Turin Games. Not even of legal American drinking age at the time, Jacobellis had a big lead in the snowboard cross final before she added some flair on her second-to-last jump. She grabbed her board — and then she fell. She returned to her feet and finished the race, but her gold became a silver.

She finally nailed down that gold medal Wednesday in the women’s snowboard cross, when she earned her first (and Team USA’s first).

Between the devastation of 2006 and the celebration of this week, Jacobellis finished fifth in 2010, seventh in 2014 and fourth in 2018. She is now filling her medal case.

And Baumgartner, a Michigan native with plenty of gray in his beard and likely in his final Games, has a medal of his own after thinking that chance had slipped away.

As the oldest snowboarder to ever represent Team USA in the Olympics, he thought he had a solid chance in the men’s snowboard cross event this week, but his chances evaporated after a late wide turn in the individual quarterfinals. He was emotional in his post-race interview, saying he did not know if he had another four years in him to compete.

Fortunately for him, he only needed another few days.