1,000 metres, Men

The story of the 1,000 m short track was not with one of the favorites, but with an Australian outsider, Steven Bradbury. A veteran of two Winter Olympics, he’d won a bronze medal with the Australian relay team in 1994, and had been a relay World Champion in 1991. But by 2002, Bradbury was no longer considered a factor. His participation in Salt Lake City was remarkable already, having broken two neck vertebrae in a training crash in late 2000.

Bradbury easily survived the heats, but appeared to go out in the quarter-finals until star skater Marc Gagnon was disqualified for obstructing a Japanese rival, which allowed the Australian to advance. A similar situation occurred in the semi-finals, when Bradbury was in third place when the defending champion, Kim Dong-Seong, collided with Satoru Terao, eliminating them both. Bradbury again advanced for an unexpected spot in the final. That appeared the best he could do, as the other four finalists quickly distanced themselves from Bradbury. In the very last curve, crowd favorite Apolo Anton Ohno and Li Jiajun of China collided, taking Mathieu Turcotte and An Hyeon-Su with them. With the rest of field laying scattered on the ice, Bradbury crossed the line first. As he raised his arms in disbelief, the others scrambled to get up and cross the line, Ohno throwing his skate over the line first, followed by Turcotte.

Bradbury’s surprise victory was Australia’s first ever gold medal in the Winter Olympics, and it made him a celebrity in his home country. Just days after the final, Australia Post issued a stamp with his likeness, and “doing a Bradbury” entered Australian vocabulary as a term for a miraculous victory.