Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - How Australia Won Its First Winter Olympics Gold Medal

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Australia is what I would call a sporting country. Cricket, rugby, and Australian Football are all incredibly popular sports. Australia has also really punched above its weight in the Summer Olympics, earning an oversized number of medals given its population. Their performance at the Winter Olympics, however, has not been so great. Learn more about the extremely unlikely way that Australia won its first Winter Olympics Gold Medal on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Australia is what I would call a sporting country. Cricket, rugby, and Australian football are all incredibly popular sports. Australia has also really punched above its weight in the Summer Olympics, earning an oversized number of medals given its population. Their performance in the Winter Olympics, however, has not been so great. Learn more about the extremely unlikely way that Australia won its first Winter Olympics gold medal on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Today, I want to tell you about my other podcast. Yes, believe it or not, this is not my only podcast. nor is it even my first podcast. I also co-host a show called This Week in Travel.

I've been doing it for almost 12 years, and over that time I've recorded the show from dozens of countries around the world. We've recently relaunched the show after a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic, but we're back now and we are better than ever. The show has interesting guests from all over the world, as well as travel news from the week,

and great tips to help you on your next trip. If you love to travel and want another dose of Gary in your life every week, Just search for This Week in Travel wherever you listen to podcasts. Once again, this week in travel. As I mentioned in the introduction, Australia is a pretty good country when it comes to sports. At almost every Summer Olympics, they rank amongst the top countries when it comes to medals per capita. And the only reason they don't rank higher is because when one really tiny country wins a single medal, the math makes it impossible for almost any other country to do better.

However, Australia is not what you'd call a winter wonderland. Almost half the country is located in the tropics, and the rest of the country is still pretty warm. While many Australians will be quick to point out that the country does in fact have some ski resorts in the mountains between Sydney and Melbourne, it isn't like Canada, where they literally have people playing hockey on their $5 bill. That being said, Australia has had some competitors in the Winter Olympics over the years. They had their first competitor at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Germany. After that, they would send small contingents, usually with under a dozen, competitors, but sometimes as many as 30.

The results were nothing to get excited about. For decades, the Australian Winter Olympians had nothing to show for their efforts. From 1936 to 1992, a 56-year period, Australia had 134 entrance in the Winter Olympics with zero medals to show for it. In 1994 in Albertville, France, Australia finally entered their Winter Olympics drought when they struck bronze in the men's 5,000-meter short-track speed skating relay. In 1998, the bronze train just kept a rolling when Australia came home with its second bronze medal, this time in an alpine skiing event, the women's slalom. As the new millennium dawned, Australia clearly was established as one of the world's most middling bronze medal winning Winter Olympic countries.

The big question was if Australia could get to that next level and actually bring home a silver, or heaven forbid, a gold. Here I have to take a detour from talking about Australian winter sports to talk about one sport in particular and the sport which will be relevant in a moment. Short track speed skating. In traditional speed skating, only two competitors are on the track at a time. The track is an elongated oval and each competitor stays in their own lane. There's no contact and it's more akin to running in a track event. In fact, a speed skating track is 400 meters long which is the same basic length as a running track.

Short track speed skating is very different. The track is much smaller and designed to fit in a hockey arena. There are no lanes. Moreover, instead of just two competitors, they're usually between four to six all racing at the same time. There's a lot of contact and jostling for position, and it is all being done on ice. The thing which short track speed skating is known for is incredible crashes. If someone falls down going around a curve on ice, they can take everyone else out. out with them, especially if they're on the inside curve.

Think of a massive NASCAR crash, but instead of cars, it's people wearing ice skates, and tight Lycra racing suits. This is where I now introduce Stephen Bradbury. Going into the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Bradbury was probably Australia's greatest short track speed skater. He was on the 1994 men's 5,000-meter relay team that won Australia's first medal. At the World Championships, he won a bronze medal. in 1993, a silver medal in 1994, and a gold medal in 1991, all of which were for the 5,000-meter

relay event. The 2002 Olympics were his fourth and final Olympics. While he had sometimes been considered a possible contender for an individual medal in past Olympics, he never won anything. In 2002, he was not on anyone's list of favorites. The 1,000 meters was the last short-track speed skating event of the Olympics, and would be Bradbury's last, last Olympic race. In the preliminary heat, he actually won against a pretty weak field. Of the 16 men who qualified for the quarterfinals, his speed was decidedly in the middle of the pack. In the quarterfinals, his incredible lucky streak began. In each quarterfinal race, there are four competitors, and the top two would advance to the semifinals. In his heat, the runner-up was Mark Gagnon from Canada,

who was also the gold medalist in the men's 500 meter and the bronze medalist in the 1500 meter. However, he was disqualified, thereby allowing the third-place finisher to advance. The third-place finisher was Stephen Bradbury. Most people assumed that Bradbury's luck would run out in the semifinals. He was in a heat with five competitors and only the top two advance to the finals. For most of the race, he was dead last. However, on the last lap, three of the skaters wiped out, allowing Bradbury to coast across the finish line in second place, allowing him to advance to the finals. Everyone was astonished that he had even made the finals, let alone have any chance of winning.

The other people he was up against in the finals were some of the best speed skaters in history. Bradbury had never won an individual medal at an Olympics or a world championship. His competitors had won dozens. No one gave him a chance. From the starting gun in the finals, Bradbury was in last. In fact, the camera had to pan out to even get Bradbury in the frame for most of the race. It was four men jockeying for position and Bradbury far behind the rest of them. But as I mentioned before, this is short track speed skating.

Things can happen in this event that can't happen in any other sport. On the very last turn of the very last lap, four of the five skaters wiped out. Bradbury was so far behind that he avoided the pile up and went on to coast over the finish line in first place. Australia, in the most improbable way possible, had actually won a Winter Olympics gold medal. Not only did Australia win its first Winter Olympics gold medal, but it was the first gold medal ever won by anyone from the Southern Hemisphere. It wasn't the only gold medal won by Australia in 2002. Alicia Kamplin won gold in aerial skiing.

The Aussies also won a gold medal in 2006 and two more in 2010. The nation of Australia has so far won five gold medals in the Winter Olympics, which matches the total number of gold medals won by Eric Heiden in just eight days at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Bradbury's improbable win has turned him into a bit of a folk hero in Australia. In Australia today, there's a phrase doing a Bradbury which can be used when someone experiences unexpected success. Immediately after the Olympics, he appeared on an Australian postage stamp. Even eventually retired from the sport in 2005 and wrote a biography. The name of the book, Last Man Standing. So what is the lesson we can take from Stephen Bradbury?

I think it is this. If you want to finish first, first you have to finish. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show.