This. Same order.
Like I said in the other thread, Kerri Strug and the vault. I bawled. It was 1996 and I was 11 years old. Too young to have seen the other greats on TV (well, except for replays, but didn’t think that was the point of the thread). If I count replays, then watching old videos of Mary Lou Retton. She was so…damned…happy.
There are others, but that was biggest for me. 2nd and 3rd places are just muddled.
I did feel very sad for Jordyn Wieber last night!
All of these are great, I want to had Hermann Maeir at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. One of the all-time great ski jump, unfortunately it was the downhill.
Frankly, I just love the Olympics. I gave my list of three moments above, but I could easily have added a dozen more without having to think very hard, and then another dozen if I gave it just a little bit of thought.
Many of the things other people have said would be on my lists as well.
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John Carlos and Tommy Smith and the raised fists at Mexico City
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Bob Beamon’s long jump (also Mexico City?)
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Mary Lou Retton’s perfect 10’s to win by a fraction
It may not be the best moment in olympic history but as a 10 year old boy I fell head over heels in love with Dorothy Hamill. Dorothy if you’re out there anywhere I love you!!
When the 1992 basketball Dream Team played silly with all other teams. Pick any 3 games…
Miracle on Ice
Kerri Strug’s one-footed landing
Olga Korbut’s backflip from (and recatching) the top bar on the uneven parallel bars.
The man had cramped up, had another runner collide with him, fell, and severely injured his knee and shoulder. Eighteen other runners had dropped out of the high-altitude race. The medals had been awarded. But he came to finish. The intersection of pain and determination is mind-boggling.
By the way, Akwhari was no slouch as a runner. In other marathons before and after the Olympics, he ran times close to or even faster than that day’s winner.
Speaking of pain and determination, I see a lot of nods to Kerri Strug’s sprained ankle. How about Shun Fujimoto, who broke his knee in floor exercise, yet went on to complete his entire pommel horse and rings routines (dropping from the rings at the end), to help win team gold.
Don’t forget Australian silver-medalist Peter Norman, who knew about their planned protest (and suggested they share the black gloves), put on a human rights badge to show solidarity, and was reprimanded and shunned by his own country’s Olympic officials as a result (they declined to send him to the '72 Games though he had qualified).
When he died in 2006, Smith and Carlos were pallbearers.
More than that : he entered the semi-finale thanks to a disqualification, entered the finale thanks to a pile-up of his competitors, and finally won the gold thanks to the second pile-up you described.
I’d call him the luckiest Olympic athlete ever.
^ Steven Bradbury, 1000 meters, Salt Lake City 2002.
It wasn’t just wild crazy luck, though. Apparently hanging back and waiting for collisions was actually a conscious tactic. With five skaters on the track, and himself (by his own description) the oldest and slowest, he reckoned that a crash that took out two of them would assure him of a bronze medal…
A super-exciting even that no one seems to ever remember or mention was the 2000 gold medal game in Women’s Soccer, US vs. (at the time arch rivals) Norway. The heavily favored US went up 1-0 early and looked in total control of the game, and then Norway scored two goals via basically kicking long balls and hoping for a defensive breakdown, then the US was pressuring and pressuring and pressuring, and… deep in stoppage time of the second half, scored the equalizer, and I literally jumped out of my chair.
Then we went on to lose in extra time, but it was still incredible.
this was one of the wildest moments in winter olympics. the crazy clawing, crawling, scramble to try to get over the line, and the winners face was priceless.
too bad we don’t have the “thrill of victory” moment teaser anymore, 'cause that would be in the top 5!
I found a video that shows the three consecutive events resulting eventually in his gold medal, and his look after he won. Unfortunately, it’s in French, but it doesn’t really matters (except for the first event : only two of the racers will qualify for the semi-finale, he makes third and another is disqualified. This isn’t obvious without the commentary) : here it is.
That says, I’ve read the article on wikipedia about Bradbury, and it appears it was a deliberate tactic. He knew that he was slower than his competitors and as a result deliberatly stayed behind thinking that his only chance to get a medal would be his competitors crashing due to too much pressure on them and too much agressivity. It turned to be the case beyond his expectations.
- Kerri Strug
- Mary Lou Retton sticking the vault in 1984.
- Back when the USA Men’s basketball team took out Nigeria, 156-73. Such and overwhelming peformance… seems just like yesterday!
Lots of good ones posted.
One that really affected me, I’m not sure why, was Sarah Hughes winning her skating match. I think it was the look on her face when she finished what seemed to my untrained eye to be a perfect routine. The complete awe and joy on her face–that beaming smile and the look of “Did I just do that? I can’t believe I just did that!” When an athlete steps up and goes beyond what even she thinks she is capable of, well, it just was infectious. I remember watching it live on TV and just welling up when she finished.
Part of the appeal for me was that she seemed to be just a normal high school kid. Her “big moment” came across as all the more special, rather than had it been some prima donna multi-millionaire professional.
Baker’s Dozen needs four more entries.
That does sound amazing, but I want to clarify that Kerri Strug did not ‘‘sprain her ankle.’’ She did that vault with two torn ligaments and the injury ended her career.
I was 13 when that happened and I remember that as a pretty miraculous moment.
That race in Beijing where Phelps’ team helped him win his 8th gold by 1/100th of a second is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. I never understood why people love sports until that moment. I remember actually jumping to my feet and running around the room.
I wasn’t alive for Nadia, but I’ve seen the YouTube video, and damn. Is it me, or were gymnasts better in those days? They certainly seemed to make fewer mistakes.
That is a sprained ankle. A sprain can range from a stretched out ligament to a complete tearing of both.
And the end result of a severe sprain is an unstable ankle which is, as you pointed out, can be career ending at that level of gymnastics.
Modern routines are far harder, and the apparatus itself (at least the uneven bars) are more difficult to use. The lower bar is considerably farther away from the upper bar these days, making transitions a lot harder.