Steven Bradbury

Bradbury is best known for his memorable and unlikely gold medal win in the men's short track 1000 metres event at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympic Games, owing to three improbable events.

Bradbury won his heat convincingly in the 1,000 m, posting a time of 1 m 30.956 s. However, it appeared that his run would end when the draw for the quarter-finals were made; Bradbury was allocated to the same race as Apolo Anton Ohno (the favourite from the host nation) and Marc Gagnon of Canada (the defending World Champion), and only the top two finishers from each race would proceed to the semifinals. Bradbury finished third in his race and thought himself to be eliminated; however, Gagnon was disqualified for obstructing another racer, thus allowing the Australian to advance to the semi-finals.

After consulting the national coach Ann Zhang, Bradbury's strategy from the semi-final onwards was to cruise behind his opponents and hope that they crashed, as he realised that he was slower and could not match their raw pace. His reasoning was that risk-taking by the favourites could cause a collision due to a racing incident, and if two skaters (or more) fell, the remaining three would all get medals, and that as he was slower than his opponents, trying to challenge them directly would only increase his chance of falling. Bradbury said that he was satisfied with his result, and felt that as the second oldest competitor in the entire field, he was not able to match his opponents in four races on the same night.

In his semi-final race, Bradbury was in last place, well off the pace of the medal favourites. However, three of the other competitors in the semi-final&mdash;defending champion Kim Dong-Sung of South Korea, multiple Olympic medallist Li Jiajun of China and Mathieu Turcotte of Canada&mdash;crashed, paving the way for the Australian to take second place and thus allowing him through to the final.

Bradbury was again well off the pace in the final, and all four of Bradbury's competitors (Ohno, Ahn Hyun-Soo, Li and Turcotte) crashed out at the final corner while jostling for the gold medal. This allowed the Australian, who was around 15 m behind with only 50 m to go, to avoid the pile-up and take the victory. Bradbury raised his arms aloft in complete disbelief and amazement at the unlikely circumstances of his victory. A shocked Bradbury became the first person from any southern hemisphere country to win a Winter Olympic event. After a period of delay, the judges upheld the result and did not order a re-race, confirming Bradbury's victory.

In an interview after winning his gold, he said, referring to his two career and life threatening accidents, Bradbury said "Obviously I wasn't the fastest skater. I don't think I'll take the medal as the minute-and-a-half of the race I actually won. I'll take it as the last decade of the hard slog I put in."

Bradbury was acutely aware of the possibility of collisions after his semi-final race. In an interview after the race he said:

"I was the oldest bloke in the field and I knew that, skating four races back to back, I wasn't going to have any petrol left in the tank. So there was no point in getting there and mixing it up because I was going to be in last place anyway. So (I figured) I might as well stay out of the way and be in last place and hope that some people get tangled up."

He later said that he never expected all of his opponents to fall, but he added that he felt that the other four racers were under extreme pressure and might have over attacked and taken too many risks. Bradbury cited the host nation pressure on Ohno, who was expected to win all four of his events, Li, who had won Olympic medals but was yet to take a gold medal, Turcotte who only had one individual event, and Ahn, who had been the form racer at the Olympics so far. Bradbury felt that none would be willing to settle for less than gold and that as a result, they might collide.


 * taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Bradbury#2002_Winter_Olympics