The Five Biggest Shockers of the Winter Olympics

We recently did an article on the most stunning Summer Olympic upsets. So, it is only fitting we give the Winter Games the same treatment. That is what we are doing below.

The Miracle on Ice – 1980

We assume you assumed this will be the first addition to this list. For non-US hockey fans, The Miracle on Ice is the nickname of the famous United State’s 4-3 win over the Soviet Union at the 1980s Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. According to some sources – the US team was a 100-1 underdog. But since there were no legal bookmakers then or sizeable betting volume on this event, that cannot be verified. Going by recent analyses posted on social media platforms involving modern bookmakers, the US team would have likely been somewhere between a 4-1 and 6-1 underdog, per today’s bookie’s opinions. Still, some sports statistical historians claim there is no way that the US would be anywhere under a 10-1 longshot in the contest, given that the Soviet team came into the 1980 Games winning four consecutive gold medals. They were everyone’s favorite to go all the way again. One of the main reasons for this was that the Soviets had a squad of super-experienced players with a wealth of international play under their belts. Conversely, the US team got composed primarily of amateurs.

In 2008, the Miricle on Ice got called the top international ice hockey story of the past century by the International Ice Hockey Federation. It was also the basis of a 2004 Disney film named – Miracle, starring Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks, the player-turned-coach who headed the US 1980 squad to their miraculous triumph. In 1988, these two nations would again meet at the Winter Olympics, with the Soviets emerging victorious 7 to 5 and notching another gold medal to their Olympics tally, while the United States finished the tournament in seventh place.

Steven Bradbury’s Wonderous One Thousand Meter-Run – 2002

The name Steven Bradbury probably does not ring any bells for non-Australian sports fans. Yet, this New South Wales native etched his name in sports history as the first athlete from the Southern Hemisphere to take home a gold medal at a Winter Olympics. He did this in 2002, in the Salt Lake City Games, where he moved through the competition en route to winning his discipline through stunning strokes of luck. Bradbury advanced to the semi-finals after a competitor got disqualified, and in the semis, he benefited from a crash that took out three competitors. In the finals, he again profited from a crash, where the four leading skaters collided, leaving room for Steven to come up from fifteen meters behind them, avoid the pile-up, and grab the first-place finish by staking the remaining fifty meters unopposed, comfortably for the gold medal.

It should get noted that even with luck on his side, Bradbury was still a quality skater who took bronze in the 1994 Lillehammer 5,000-meter relay and medaled in this same discipline in the 1991, 1993, and 1994 World Championships. If the 1,000-meter competition happened today, we are sure this Australian skater would probably get given somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-1 odds.

Pierre Vaultier Unexpected 2014 Sochi Gold Medal Win

Snowboarding is a competitive activity that became more publically known in the US in the late 1970s. Going by the available data, snowboards first became available in 1965, but prize money contests did not become super-established until the 1980s. The Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, were the first to feature snowboarding. Karine Rub from France and Canada’s Ross Rabagliati were the first individuals to win Olympic gold medals in this sport.

Pierre Vaultier is a French snowboarder specializing in Snowboard cross who began snowboarding at six. He was a favorite at the 2010 Vancouver Games, even after a 2009 season marred with injury woes. However, he only took 9th place in these games. Two months before the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Vaultier tore his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), leaving his participation in the games in serious doubt. Still, he forewent an advised operation and competed wearing a right leg splint. Despite these challenges, he wound up winning gold, beating odds between 10-1 and 20-1. No one believed he could contend for a medal at the time.

Ester Ledecka Takes Double Gold in Pyeongchang

Ester Ledecká is a Czech alpine skier and snowboarder who became the second woman to snag two Winter Olympic gold medals in separate disciplines, accomplishing this feat at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang. Her snowboarding win was not much of a shocker, as she is best got known for her exploits in this sport. But no one anticipated she would have a shot at medaling in alpine skiing.

The expectation for her doing anything of note at the event was so small that multiple broadcasters did not even choose to show her run live, as she was the 49th-ranked competitor and had never medaled at a to-level international event. Yet, she finished her run 0.01 seconds ahead of Ana Veith, the 2014 defending champion, and attained gold. A week later, Ledecka, twenty-two at the time, won the snowboard parallel giant slalom and added a second Pyeongchang gold medal in the 2018 Games. The odds for her winning the alpine skiing medal were set at 50-1 before the Olympics.

USA Wins Gold in Bobsleigh in 2002

The reason this made this cut is because the United States had not won a medal in bobsleigh in forty-six years before the 2002 Salt Lake Games, where the unlikely US winners (the country’s female first), Vonetta Flowers and Jill Bakken, were not even the top national challengers. What is even more interesting is that Flowers and Bakken were only training for a few weeks before the Olympics. They were, in no shape or form, an established pair.

The Swiss team was the reigning champions, and everyone expected this competition to be a two-dog race, one between Switzerland and Germany. Nevertheless, the US underdog teams were the questions, and they came in first ahead of Germany’s Ulrike Holzner and Sandra Kiriasis. We could not find any historical odds data on what bookmakers would give this unlikely American duo to win gold, but we would guess that it would be somewhere around 50-1 winning chances.  

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