The 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the USSR managed to go off script TWICE.
Going into the tournament, the general assumption in Canada was that Canada would win all eight games. Canadian pros had never faced the best of the USSR before, since the USSR cheated by declaring its pros “amateurs” and Canadian pros could not play in the Olympics. Canada had eventually boycotted international play in protest over the cheating. So everyone in Canada assumed the mightly NHL superstars would annihilate the Soviet doofuses. It was our sport. We were invincible. The Communist bastards had no chance. In Game 1 Canada led 2-0 after six minutes.
And then, uh, the predictions of a sweep turned out to be, shall we say, premature. The Soviets were all over the ice. They beat Canada like a rented mule. After 5 games they led three games t o one,with one tie. Canada’s team was booed off the ice in Vancouver.
So the story had become the arrogance of the Canadians and how their bruising style was no match for systemic, positional efficiency. Humiliation awaited Canada, vindication the Soviets.
And so then Canada won three games in a row to win the Series. Go figure.
2008 Monster Jam World Finals! Las Vegas, Nevada! (as seen on TV)
After 4 or 5 rounds of eliminatons we are down to the Final. The ultimate race for all the marbles! Just two trucks remain! Which one will it be? Green light and they’re off! The camera follows them both thru “Thunder Alley” and into Sam Boyd Silver Bowl. They approach the turn and…
Cut to a different camera, quick! Show Max D stop, then quickly head for the finish, do a burnout and go to commercial!
No shots of the other guy, not a single word or mention, nary a hint! No “post-race” interview, no congratulatory hand-shake, NADA, ZIP, ZILCH!
Turns out the truck flipped into the stands. I don’t think anyone was hurt but the TV coverage of the event and the Monster Jam website did a very thourough job of whitewashing and hushing it up. The only way I was able to figure out what happened was to watch the footage of the winning truck (from the driver’s viewpoint inside the truck) making the turn frame-by-frame. You can just make out the other truck careening into the stands.
Too bad the folks at Monster Jam weren’t in charge of the Kennedy Assassination Coverup!
You may not mean Empire Maker. He finished 2nd in the 2003 Derby despite a hoof problem, sat out the Preakness, then took the Belmont over popular “people’s horse” Funny Cide.
Best Belmont examples: Big Brown, who won the Derby and Preakness by open lengths to come into the Belmont as an overwhelming and unbeaten favorite, only to be pulled up halfway through the race and jogged around the rest of the way, beaten 200+ lengths by a third-rate Da’Tara - a horse he should have been able to beat running backwards.
or Spectacular Bid, who was considered a shoo-in to complete the third consecutive Triple Crown in 1979, only to step on a safety pin that morning, get rushed into a fast pace early set by a hopeless longshot by his panicking and mediocre jockey Ronnie Franklin, and founder in the stretch, finishing a well-beaten third to the average Coastal.
In 1989, Easy Goer was considered the best horse to try the Triple Crown since the Bid, but was upset in mud by West Coast stalwart Sunday Silence. It was considered a fluke, since Easy Goer had similarly been upset in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile the previous year on mud, and he was a solid favorite in the Preakness, only to lose to Sunday Silence again, by a nose in one of the more famous stretch runs in the history of racing. For the Belmont, Sunday Silence finally took over the favorite’s role, but was clobbered as Easy Goer beat him by 8 lengths and ran the second fastest Belmont,only slower than Secretariat.
I think the 2006 Preakness deserves mention, as **Barbaro **was considered a sure winner before the race, but sadly broke a rear leg shortly after the start and made headlines of a different sort until being put down the following January.
There’s no right or wrong approach here, I suppose. But when I read in the OP of “the script,” I was thinking of a Hollywood script.
So, when I think of sports eventes that “went off the script,” I didn’t think of unexpected events. On the contrary, I thought of events where Hollywood would have gone one way (“scrappy, little underdogs knocks off the arrogant champions”) but turned out completely differently.
But then, reality USUALLY doesn’t go the Hollywood way. Most of the time, the big, bad, arrogant champions SMASH the gritty little underdogs!
I mean, Chuck Wepner (the inspiration for Rocky Balboa) could have punched sides of beef from now til Doomsday, the fact remains that Muhammad Ali at his worst was more than a match for Wepner at his best.
“Rudy” notwithstanding, 99.99999% of the guys on college football taxi squads will never be allowed to suit up for a real game, nor SHOULD they!
Given a favorable draw, a small school can get to the Sweet Sixteen in March, but eventually, they’re probably going t run into a traditional powerhouse that’s going to annihilatethem.
Movie fans love to see underdogs come through on the big stage. But as we all know, that doesn’t happen often.
The Calgary Winter Olympics and the debut of the Jamaican bobsled team. What a story! The great sprinting nation applies its legs to antoher sprinting-dependent sport, with thoughts of blowing away all those Austrians and Swiss.
They wobble all around the track, spill once or twice, and finish about the back of the pack. Never mind, Hollywood uses its own ending anyway, and just calls it fiction.
Well, the movie version (if itw were pro-Canada) would probably gloss over the fact that Bobby Clarke intentionally took Soviet superstar Valerie Kharmolov out of game 6 and 7 by trying to break his ankle. The movie version would undoubtedly show Kharlamov twisting his ankle while drinking vodka and goofing around in practice becuase he wasn’t serious about the Canaidans.