There is great comfort for a child, still slow and perhaps not yet even steady, in the fable of the tortoise and the hare. And reassurance too in God’s biblical promise that someday “the last shall be first.”
The message, though, never seemed particularly attuned to the exalted world of the Olympic competition where the credo “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“Higher, Faster, Stronger”) didn’t portend triumphant endings for the lowest, slowest or weakest.
And for more than a century that had certainly been the case, at least until the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and the extraordinary tale — true story, not a fable — of Steven John Bradbury.
Bradbury was a champion short-track speed skater from Australia, not exactly one of the sport’s strongholds. Still, at Lillehammer in 1994, when short-track was still new to the Olympics and the field not yet too competitive, Bradbury was part of the 5,000-meter relay team that won a bronze, the first-ever winter medal for his nation.
But following upon that glory, Bradbury would become better known for spectacular disasters than for racing success. Indeed, as the 2002 Olympics approached, the 28-year-old was considered lucky to be alive and walking let alone racing.
During a 1995 World Cup race, he went somersaulting through the air and landed on another skater’s blade. It sliced through his thigh, cutting all four quadriceps muscles. So much blood gushed from the wound — it was estimated he lost more than half his body’s blood — that only extraordinarily prompt medical attention saved his life. It would take more than 100 stitches to sew him up and 18 months before he could compete again at full strength.
In 2000 he had another serious mishap during a training workout. When a skater tumbled in front of him, Bradbury tried to hurdle the fallen body. Instead, he clipped his skates, sending him head first into the boards. Bradbury fractured two vertebrae in his neck. He would wear a halo brace for six weeks and require pins implanted in his skull and metal plates in his back and chest. Doctors said he was unlikely ever to race again.
But there he was — just 17 months later — in Salt Lake City, having made his fourth Olympic team. Bradbury’s aspirations for his race, the 1,000 meters, were modest. He wasn’t going to risk mixing it up on the ice. He’d be content to skate at the rear, to play the tortoise to all the hares on the American, Korean, Chinese and Canadian teams. His true hope was to get American star Anton Apolo Ohno to endorse a new line of skates he was producing.
He got Ohno all right — as an opponent in the quarterfinals. With only two skaters slated to advance to the semis — and world champion Mark Gagnon also in that heat — Bradbury figured to be toeing the line for the last time. In fact, he finished a distant third, but survived to race another day after Gagnon was disqualified for obstruction.
In the semis, Bradbury was clearly the slowest skater in the five-man field. He was far back in last place when there was a crash up front. Three competitors went sprawling, including Korea’s defending Olympic champ Kim Dong-sung. Out of harm’s way, Bradbury crossed the finish line in second place to advance to the final.
In the final, there was one skater from each of the four short-track powers and one just-happy-to-be-there Aussie in green and gold. There was no way Bradbury could hope to keep up with the torrid pace and, considering his path to the final, no reason to try. Going into the last turn, 50 meters from the finish, there was a four-man scrum jostling for the gold medal. Bradbury was alone, gliding his merry way some 15 meters back from the pack.
And at that moment, the Gods of chaos smiled on Bradbury. China’s Li Jijuan, trying to pass Ohno on the outside, grabbed the American’s arm for a boost. But the two also tangled skates and went down. Li skittered into the boards. Ohno went flying in the other direction, where he undercut Korea’s Anh Hyun-soo, who was making his move on the inside. The two of them then wiped out Canada’s Mathieu Turcotte, the last man standing in the pack.
He wasn’t, however, the last man standing. That was, of course, Bradbury who, looking every bit as stunned as the four fallen skaters and indeed every person in the arena, navigated his way through the human wreckage and across the finish line. And for once in Olympic history, the last was indeed first.
Mark Starr has been a national sports correspondent for Newsweek since 1982 and has attended 10 Olympics. Look for his columns each Sunday in The Herald leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Games.
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