Relive the greatest moments and best stories from the history of the Winter Olympics.
Like many of a certain generation, I got into winter sports in the 70s when I saw Franz Klammer descend almost suicidally down the Hahnenkahm on Ski Sunday. The Winter Olympics have got bigger and better over the years, with new events like the slalom cross, halfpipe and big air adding drama and excitement, and with the increasing prospect that Team GB might actually pick up a medal or two.
With Milano-Cortina 2026 almost upon us, I’ve dipped into the history of the Games to pick out 20 great moments to whet your appetite for what is to come. If you’re more interested in the scandals, failures and controversies you will also enjoy my companion piece https://bestandworst.net/the-worst-of-the-winter-olympics/
20. The rare (and brief) moment of unity – Korea, PyeongChang 2018
The Japanese surrender in 1945 at the end of WW2 set in train one of the most damaging and so-far long-lasting divisions of a nation ever seen. The Korean Peninsula, under Japanese colonial rule Japan since 1910, was split into two zones – the North, occupied by the Soviet Union, and the South, occupied by the US. The splitting of Korea survived a brutal and bloody war from 1950-53, and remains to this day, having become much, much more than a matter of geography. Whilst the South has become one of the most successful, prosperous and open nations in the world, the North has become impoverished and isolated under the totalitarian leadership of the Kim family.
Officially the two countries have been ‘at war’ since the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953, but the reality is an uneasy peace, with tensions that rise or falls according to events. The occasions when the two nations come closer together tend to occur around world sporting events. For example, during the ‘Sunshine Policy’ era from 1998-2008, when the South reached out to the North, there were three Olympic Games where the two teams marched together in the opening ceremony although they competed separately. After this, there was a cooling, and it took another decade before the two nations were ready to show any sort of unity.
It came with the 2018 Winter Olympics set for PyeongChang in South Korea. Tensions between the two were actually pretty high, with North Korea accelerating its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and giving every indication that it was willing to use them. But, the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, seemed keen to participate in a Games on his doorstep so he reached out to the South. His approach was received positively.
So it was, on Friday February 9th 2018 that in an opening ceremony under the theme of ‘Peace in Motion’ and a message of reconciliation, athletes from the two nations entered the stadium, walking hand-in-hand behind twin flagbearers bearing the Korean Unification Flag. It was hugely emotional, particularly for Koreans on either side of the divide. There was the added show of unity in the ice hockey arena, where a combined North and South women’s team played together (sadly, they were outclassed and finished last, but that didn’t really seem to matter).
Did it make any difference in the long term? Possibly not, but, even if it was only for a brief moment, it did show that unity and fellowship are possible even in the most difficult of circumstances.
19. The double McTwist – Shaun White, Half-Pipe, Vancouver 2010
There may be no better feeling in sport than starting your final run in an event knowing that there is no way you can lose. In 2010 this was the situation that faced American boarding legend Shaun White. White, a world champion in both snowboarding and skateboarding, and reigning half-pipe gold medallist from Turin 2006, had secured gold with a superb score of 46.8 (out of 50) in his first run. With all of his competitors having completed their second run and none getting anywhere near his score, his second run was just for show, effectively a lap of honour. Many would have taken it easy, rolling out their most reliable tricks. Not White.
White, a truly global star, particularly after the huge success of the video game Shaun White Snowboarding, wanted to produce something for his fans that had never been seen before in his event. He wanted to call his trick the Tomahawk, after a 30-ounce steak he had eaten at the Winter X Games, but it is most commonly referred to as the Double McTwist 1260. It involves three and a half twists and two flips and, at the time, was thought impossible. For anyone but White, that is. He went for it as the final trick of his celebratory run and delivered. His score, a little unnecessary in the circumstances, was a massive 48.4. He could and perhaps should have won two golds for it!
Four years later, in Sochi, White, surprisingly, missed his third consecutive gold, indeed a medal of any colour, but he returned in 2018 to win his third. Older, but no less of a risk taker, he had a bad crash before the Games that led to him needing 62 stitches in his face. He nevertheless made it to Tokyo, where he trailed coming into his second run. This time he produced back-to-back 1440s to overhaul Japan’s Ayumu Hirano. White had his third and final Olympic gold, a great haul for an extraordinary athlete and performer.
18. The dead heat – Two-man bobsleigh, PyeongChang 2018
Competition in many Winter Olympic sports has become a lot closer in recent years. It’s more difficult to keep advances in technology and training methods secret, and there’s more knowledge transfer as the best coaches and technologists get poached by countries looking to improve their prospects. Never has a competition been closer than the two-man bobsleigh in PyeongChang.
The two-man bob competition requires each team to make four runs down the track. The times from each of the four runs are added together to create a combined time and this is what dictates who wins the medals. In 2018 after four rounds of competition, there were nine teams that finished within one second of the winners. The fourth-placed finishers (Germany 2) were just 0.20 seconds behind gold – that’s five hundredths of a second each run. The bronze medallists (Latvia) were a minuscule 0.05 behind, or just over one hundredth of a second for each run. And the winners could not be separated at all so both were awarded the gold medal. Canada and Germany 1 both recorded exactly 3 min 16.86 seconds across four runs so took to the podium together.
There surely cannot be a sport in which the pursuit of marginal gains is more relevant. It could be the speed of reaction from the start buzzer, the spikes on the running shoes, the number of strides taken, the aerodynamics of the helmets, the tiny adjustments to the lines taken, even whether they’ve gone to the toilet that morning. Both Canada and Germany would doubtless have been delighted with their medals in 2018, but I suspect both left wishing they could have found that extra hundredth of a second and going to work immediately on finding it for next time.
17. The ‘slacker’ – Red Gerard, Slopestyle, PyeongChang 2018
Slopestyle is a boarding event that was introduced into the Winter Games in Sochi 2014. It’s a peculiar event in which the competitors have to negotiate a course in two distinct halves:
- The Jib section (or Upper Course) – containing rails, boxes and wall-rides, almost like an urban ice zone.
- The Jump section (or Lower Course) – featuring three or four massive ‘kickers’ that launch riders high into the air, allowing them to complete multiple flips and spins.
The goal of the event is not to be the fastest, but to impress the judges with the creativity, difficulty and style of the tricks that you perform as you descend.
In 2018, one of the favourites for gold was Redmond ‘Red’ Gerard, a 17-year-old American. The sixth of seven children, Gerard came from a family where outdoors activity was everything, and where caution was a dirty word. He grew up with dirt bikes, mountain bikes, snowboards and had the unusual and significant advantage of having a miniature snowboarding park built in his backyard, together with a rope tow.
Having qualified in PyeongChang for the 12-man final, Gerard got off to a dismal start. The story goes that the evening before the final he binge watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine, then overslept in the morning and had to borrow a teammate’s jacket because he could not find his own in his rush to get to the start line on time. Whatever the truth was (and Gerard always denied the rumour), he struggled on his first two runs, and it looks to the layman as though the ill-fitting jacket is a factor. His poor start left him with just one more chance to get into the medals (the riders are allowed three runs from which only the best score counts). Having recorded the fourth best score in qualifying, he knew he could do it, but he was under huge pressure.
The Jib section does not really give much of an opportunity to build a big score, but it is fraught with elements that you can mess up. In his final run, Gerard negotiated all these elements cleanly and confidently. In the lower section, he made his first big jump a switch backside 1260. His second, which many felt was the key jump on his run, was a frontside double cork 1080, then he finished with a backside triple cork 1440 – three off-axis flips and four full rotations (don’t ask). All three were executed to perfection with big height, good looking in-air rotations and solid landings.
When the judges’ scores came up, they showed 87.16, catapulting Gerard from almost last to first place, with only a handful of competitors still to make their final runs. Although Maxence Parrot of Canada came close (with 86.00), Gerard held on to become not only the youngest snowboarding gold medallist, but also the youngest gold medallist in any men’s event since 1928. Gerard was disappointed to miss out in 2022, when he came fourth in slopestyle and fifth in big air, but he goes again in 2026, still nicely chilled but perhaps with a new alarm clock.
16. The triple axel – Midori Ito, Figure Skating, Albertville 1992
The axel is the only jump in figure skating that requires the skater to be going forward when they take off. And because all jumps finish with a backwards landing, if effectively means there is a half-rotation ‘tax’ on the jump, such that a double axel requires two and a half rotations, and a triple requires three and a half. The triple is considered the ‘wall’ that separates the very good skater from the elite skater. It took until 1978 for a man to land the jump in competition, and it was another 10 years before a female skater did so.
The woman who achieved it was Midori Ito of Japan in 1988. Standing only 4 ft 9 in tall, and powerful for her size, she was a supremely athletic jumper. She landed her first triple jump aged only eight, and as a junior attracted the nickname of the ‘Jumping Flea’ due to her prowess for triples (and her diminutive size). Jumping remained her strength as she progressed into senior competition, but her relative weakness in compulsory figures (a core component of the event when she started) and lower marks for artistic impression, meant that her incredible athleticism was often not rewarded with medals. Although her free programme always scored well, she usually had too big a points deficit to make up to win.
The 1988 Olympics in Calgary was a case in point. This was a three-stage event with Compulsory Figures, Short Programme and Free Skating. Ito’s free skating routine included seven triples, two more than anyone else, and was scored third, but her poor figures and short programme saw her finish only fifth overall. (In fact, some think her free programme was better than third, but that her poor figures saw the judges mark her down.)
Undeterred, Ito set about mastering the triple axel. She already had the triples lutz, salchow, loop and toe-loop in her locker, but the axel would be the piece de resistance. She became the first woman to land it in 1988, the year of her Olympic disappointment, in a regional Japanese competition. She then did it again in the 1989 World Championships, where it pushed her free skating scores so high that she rose from sixth place after the figures to first. In so doing, she became the first ever Asian to win gold in the sport. Could she repeat the act at the Olympics?
Ito’s chances in Albertville 1992 were improved when the Compulsory Figures, her nemesis throughout her career, were removed from the programme. It would now just be the Short Programme and the Free Programme. Ito planned to unveil the triple axel in the Short Programme, but changed her mind opting instead for a triple lutz combination. She must have wished she had stuck to her plan when she fell on this jump. She still placed fourth, but knew that she now had to include the triple axel in her free skating routine.
The jump came early on in her routine. She accelerated into it, took off from her front foot, completed the turns in the air, but missed her landing by a whisker and fell. She was straight up on her feet, though, and continued her routine. Crowd and commentators alike wondered whether she would attempt the jump again. Undeterred by her failure she did, and this time she landed it perfectly for the first triple axel by a woman in the Olympics. Ito’s score was enough to promote her from fourth to second, and her medal, a silver, was the first ever won by an Asian, male or female, in Olympic figure skating.
15. The perfect jump – Kazuyoshi Funaki, Ski jumping, Nagano 1998
An aspect of the Winter Olympics that distinguishes it largely from the Summer Games is fear. In many of the winter events – downhill skiing, half pipe, freestyle boarding, bobsleigh, skeleton – there is a significant element of danger. If you push too hard or get it wrong, there’s a risk you could get injured and in some cases even killed. The winter sport that to most people’s eyes is the scariest must be ski jumping.
A jumper has to set themselves at the top of a narrow slide (officially called the inrun) about 100m long and accelerate down it at roughly the rate of a decent sports car. As they approach the takeoff, having reached a speed of around 55-60 mph, they have to transition at exactly the right moment from a crouch to a full-body extension in order to launch themselves upwards and forwards. They then have to hold a very precise gliding position with their skis in a V-shape and their body almost parallel to their skis as they ‘fly’ through the air for up to 10 seconds. They are fighting gravity and wind resistance all the way down knowing that any wrong movement or slight twitch could throw them off course. They then must land smoothly on the downslope. Ski jumpers need power, core strength, flexibility, the ability and skill to make micro-movements and, of course, nerves of iron. The best of them make it look remarkably easy.
The best of all time is probably Matti Nykanen, the flying Finn, who won five Olympic medals including three golds in Calgary 1988, but thereafter led a troubled life. Simon Ammann of Switzerland (four golds) and Jens Weissflog of East Germany (three golds) also enter the debate as well as Japan’s Noriaki Kasai who appeared in eight Winter Olympics and became the oldest ever medal winner.
One who perhaps does not often feature in list of the greatest of all time is Kasai’s fellow countryman, Kazuyoshi Funaki. Funaki, however, holds a distinction that no other ski jumper in history has – a ‘perfect’ jump. Competing on home snow in his debut Olympics aged 22, Funaki was lying fourth in the Individual Large Hill event after the first round (of two) of jumps. He knew he needed to produce something special for his second, and he did. His jump was not the longest at 132.5m, but overall scores are made up not only of distance but also of style. Five judges each award up to 20 points for the form that the jumper has displayed in the jump. The judges, though, are notoriously demanding, looking for any tremor or asymmetry in skis or arms to deduct a point or a half.
Until 1998 no-one had ever received a perfect score in Olympic competition. Funaki’s flight, though, was so stable and his landing so flawless that all five judges had no choice but to award him the maximum 20 points. His overall score for the jump propelled him from fourth place to first, and Japan had a home gold medal winner to celebrate. Funaki never quite hit these heights again, but, to be fair, it’s difficult to improve on perfection.
14. The sprint finish – Jessie Diggins and Kikkan Randall, Team Sprint, PyeongChang 2018
The US has entered a men’s team in the cross-country skiing in every Winter Olympics since 1924. They were a little later coming to the party in the women’s events (which were added in 1952), but they’ve put a team together for this every Games since Sapporo 1972. Their success rate prior to 2018 was low, with only one medal in all of that time, a silver in 1976 in the 30km for Bill Koch, the pioneer of freestyle (or skate) skiing.
Their chances started looking up with the emergence of some world-class women skiers in the 2010s, in particular Jessie Diggins from Minnesota. Diggins was able to break the stranglehold exerted by Northern Europeans and, having won medals in the worlds, looked a decent prospect for a podium in South Korea. Her best chance, perhaps, would come in the team sprint event, where she partnered with Kikkan Randall, another world championship medallist.
The team sprint consists of six 1.25km sprints, alternating between two teammates. Each leg is utterly punishing, but the athletes have two and a half to three minutes between each to recapture their breath and their energy. The US pair qualified fastest for the final, but knew they would be up against two very strong teams in the final, Sweden and Norway, both comprising duos each with multiple Olympic medals.
By the start of the sixth and final lap the three were the only teams in contention. USA had Diggins but Sweden had Stina Nilsson, individual sprint champion from this Games, and Norway, Miken Casperson Falla, sprint champion from 2014. All three would be running on fumes, so it would likely come down to whoever could summon up the energy and determination to reach the finish line first. The lead changed hands several times on the final lap, but with 250m to go the three athletes were more or less level. Just before the final turn Nilsson of Sweden moved into what looked like a decisive lead, while Falla dropped off. Diggins, though, stayed in touch, and launched one last desperate effort down the finishing straight. With the US TV commentators utterly losing it (the video is worth watching for this alone), she drew level then inched ahead with metres remaining. A final lunge and she crossed the line less than a ski (and only 0.19 sec) in front. It was the first medal ever won by US women in the cross-country and it was a gold.
When the commentators had calmed down, they captured the moment nicely, “Olympic dreams are nurtured over a lifetime but realised in an instant.” Diggins and Randall had realised a dream that they may not even have known they had.
13. Britain reigns supreme – Women’s Skeleton, 2010, 2014, 2018
Great Britain, despite its formidable record in the Summer Olympics, has never really been a major player at the Winter Olympics. The country does not have much in the way of hills and less in the way of snow so it’s not entirely surprising. There has been a smattering of medals along the way, and a brief period in which we did well in figure skating (John Curry in 1976, Robin Cousins in 1980 and Torvill and Dean in 1984), but otherwise the pickings have been slim to say the least. There is one event, however, in which GB has consistently delivered, the slightly terrifying sport of skeleton. With the exception of Beijing 2022, GB has medalled at every Games in which skeleton has featured.
The sport was reintroduced to the Winter Olympics in 2002 after a 54-year gap. It’s an event in which the competitor lies face down on a shallow sled (really not much more than a tea tray) and slides as fast as they possible can down a bobsleigh run. Speeds can reach up to 90mph, G-forces can get up to 5G and a slider can experience dizziness or loss of consciousness while trying to propel the sled down the optimal line. It really is not for the faint-hearted. It was, however, a sport that Team GB targeted from its reintroduction, seeing that it did not favour the more established winter Olympics teams.
Alex Coomber was first to medal in 2002 with a bronze, then Shelley Rudman went one better in 2006. The big breakthrough came in 2010 with Amy Williams. Williams was introduced to the sport when the University of Bath, where she was studying, opened a 140m push-start track to mimic the start of a skeleton race. She tried it, liked it, showed promise, then started training on ice. She nearly made it onto the 2006 GB team, but could only travel as reserve (to Rudman). Her big chance came when the field was expanded for Vancouver, and she took it superbly. She recorded a track record in the first run (of four) and thereafter was never dislodged from first place. In the end, her winning margin was a very comfortable 0.56 seconds.
Williams’ baton was picked up in 2014 by Lizzy Yarnold. Yarnold had been talent-spotted in UK Sport’s Girls4Gold initiative and directed towards the event. It turned out she was a natural, winning a World Cup race at only her second attempt. She kept on improving, and as Sochi 2014 approached she was ranked a clear number one in the world. She justified her ranking with a dominant victory in Sochi, recording the fastest time in each of her four runs.
Four years later and Yarnold was back to defend her title. This time the circumstances were less propitious. Yarnold had taken a break between Games due to burnout, then on her return to competition had discovered that the dizziness and disorientation she often felt during racing was due to a vestibular disorder. Somehow, she was still able to race, although her arrival at PyeongChang coincided with a flare-up of her condition, as well as a debilitating chest infection. It also transpired later that she had a tumour in her knee AND two displaced discs in her back. What a trouper.
The event was closer than in Sochi. After three of the four runs, Yarnold was in first place, but held a narrow lead of only 0.08 seconds over Lolling of Germany in second, and 0.17 over Laura Deas of GB in third. Any errors in the final run and Yarnold might lose it. We need not have worried. She saved her best to last, starting fast and finding the optimum line to record a new track record to slide to glory. A bronze for Deas made it a stunning finale for team GB.
12. The flawless performance – Yuna Kim, Figure Skating, Vancouver 2010
In 2010 there were a number of incredible performances on the skating rink at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. In the Pairs, the Chinese duo of Xue and Hongbo needed a new record combined score to beat their compatriots Qing and Jian, who had themselves set a record in the free programme. In the Ice Dance, the home crowd was thrilled to celebrate a first ever Canadian victory in this event by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. And Evan Lysacek of the US won a supremely tight contest in the men’s singles. All of these were surpassed, however, by a stunning performance in the ladies’ singles.
Yuna Kim arrived at the Games as the clear favourite. The 19-year-old had won the previous year’s World and Four Continents Championships and was achieving scores previously unthought of in the sport. Her combination of technical brilliance and artistic interpretation had never been seen before. She could jump, spin, maintain perfect body positions and skate fast, all the while looking effortless, graceful and in tune with her music. She could also deliver on the highest stage and under pressure; in fact, in her entire professional career she never finished off the podium in a major tournament.
In Vancouver she did not miss a beat. In the short programme, where there are seven required elements to be performed within a time limit of 2 min 40 sec, she recorded a new world record score of 78.50, almost five points ahead of second-placed Mao Asada of Japan. Two days later in the free programme, she demolished her competition with another world record, this time almost 20 points ahead of Asada. Needless to say, her combined score was a new world record and effectively put her in a different league to all her competitors. It’s impossible to do the free routine justice in words, so it’s worth looking at the video attached to this piece.
Kim was the first South Korean to medal at the Olympics, a feat she repeated in 2014 when she controversially was denied gold by a judging scandal. In the Sochi Games, for reasons we can only surmise, the winner was a Russian who, to add insult to injury, subsequently failed a drug test. Kim retired from competitive skating soon after, so was unable to fight for the title on home ice in 2018, but she did have the honour of being the final torch bearer and of lighting the Olympic flame. It was a fitting tribute to someone who had lit up every Korean’s life when she won in 2010.
11. The miraculous recovery – Hermann Maier, Nagano 1998
Austrian Hermann Maier is without doubt one of the greatest alpine ski racers in history. His 54 World Cup race wins – split across downhill, giant slalom and super-G – place ‘the Herminator’ third in the all-time list for men. Something of a late developer, he was 23 before he made his World Cup debut for the hugely competitive Austrian team, but once he started winning races there was no looking back. Hard-working, strong and willing to take risks, he came to the 1998 Olympics in Nagano fancied to medal in all three of his disciplines. His campaign, though, very nearly came to an end in the first of them.
The first competition in Nagano was the downhill. Maier had seen the previous skier, Cretier of France, set an early fastest time, despite visibly slowing down at the seventh turn early in the run. The Austrian was less cautious and approached the same turn aggressively, skiing at over 105 km/h. Too fast and too straight, Maier took off and starting flying through the air completely out of control. When he finally came to earth it was on his head, before tumbling head over heels, crashing through two layers of protective netting, then coming to rest several hundred metres from where he had got airborne. Lucky not to break his neck, never mind any other bones, he got up and gave a welcome and surprising thumbs-up to the TV cameras.
Maier was, though, badly bruised, and fortunate that poor weather delayed his next event, the super-G, giving him extra time to recover. If he was mentally shaken by his crash, he did not show it. Perhaps he did exercise a little more caution at the top of the run, but he was still fast enough to record the quickest time, a full 0.61 seconds (that’s a lot in this event) ahead of second place. Not content with one stunning comeback victory, he followed it up with a second. In the giant slalom he skied to the fastest times in both the first and the second legs to win another gold. The 24-year-old Austrian had recovered from his dramatic crash to win the double.
As it happens, Maier was not finished with comebacks. Three years after Nagano he was involved in an awful motorbike accident, sustaining injuries that came close to requiring amputation of his right leg. He was unable to compete in Salt Lake City 2002, but dedicated himself to his rehab with the aim of returning to competitive ski-ing. Amazingly he started winning World Cup races again and qualified for Turin 2006. In Italy he could not quite bring home a gold, but did win a silver (super-G) and a bronze (giant slalom). The indestructible Maier had shown, like another famous Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger, an ‘I’ll be back’ mentality that was more than just words.
10. The medal collector – Marit Bjorgen, Cross Country Skiing, 2002-2018
To earn the title of all-time great in any sport, an athlete should demonstrate longevity. Getting to the top is difficult, repeating the act is harder, doing it multiple times confers the mark of greatness. Norway’s Marit Bjorgen competed at her first Olympics in 2002. When she retired after her fifth, 16 years later in 2018, she did so as the most decorated athlete in Winter Olympic history.
Bjorgen’s sport, cross-country skiing, is almost a national religion in her native Norway. It’s more than a sport for many, it’s a primary mode of transport and there’s a common saying that “Norwegians are born with skis on their feet”. Bjorgen started off as ‘sprinter’ (a sprint in cross-country is not what you or I would call a sprint, typically lasting about a mile) but soon developed into an excellent all-round skier, capable of winning endurance events up to 30km and beyond.
Her first Games, in Salt Lake City 2002, saw her win silver as part of the Norwegian 4 x 5km relay team. By Turin 2006 she was a triple world champion and entered into five events as a big favourite, but the Games were to be a crushing disappointment. Falling ill shortly before the Games, she underperformed badly, and took home only a silver in the individual 10km. She was desperate for redemption in Vancouver 2010 and she got it. If not utterly dominant, a haul of three golds, a silver and a bronze showed her at her best. Her long-awaited first Olympic gold came in the sprint, and she quickly followed it up with the 15km pursuit and the 4 x 5km relay.
Once the dam had broken she was unstoppable. Four years later, in Sochi she won another three golds (the 15km pursuit again, plus the 30km freestyle and the team sprint relay). In 2018, and very much in the veteran class for athletes, she won another two golds plus a silver and two bronze. Over her five Olympic Games her total haul was eight gold, four silver and three bronze – 15 medals in total.
For someone largely unknown outside of Scandinavia, Marit Bjorgen is more than a household name in Norway. She’s a national hero, inspiration and role model.
Other legendary Norwegian winter sportspeople you might not have heard of:
- Ole Einer Bjorndalen – biathlete who competed at six consecutive Games from 1994 to 2014 and won eight golds, including all four in Salt Lake City 2022, plus four silver and one bronze
- Bjorn Daehlie – the greatest male cross-country skier of all-time, who won eight golds and four silver from 1992 to 1998
- Kjetil Andre Aamodt – skier who competed in five games and medalled in Downhill, Giant Slalom, Super-G and Combined; four golds, two silver and two bronze
- Sonja Henie – an ice-skater from between the wars, she won three consecutive golds in figure skating, the first aged only 15, before going on to a successful career as a movie star
9. The perseverer – Dan Jansen, Speed Skating, Lillehammer 1994
In 1984, speed skater Dan Jansen impressed many when he qualified, aged only 18, for the US Winter Olympic team. He placed only 16th in the 1,000m, but came very close to a surprise medal in the 500m, finishing only one sixth of a second behind the bronze medallist. Assuming he developed in the coming years, there seemed to be no question that Jansen would be contending for medals in future Olympics. Little did Jansen know, however, that a string of challenges and misfortunes would bedevil his career and prevent him from reaching his goal for a decade.
After Sarajevo, he progressed fast on the track. By 1986 he was top of the World Cup rankings for both the 500m and the 1,000m events. He suffered a physical setback with a bout of mononucleosis in 1987, but a bigger, mental blow was dealt with his elder sister Jane’s diagnosis of leukemia. Jansen travelled to Calgary in 1988 with his sister gravely ill, and learnt on the day of his 500m final that she had died. Although he competed, he was badly off his game and, after surviving a rare false start, slipped and fell in the race proper. He fell again in the 1,000m when on target for a world record and gold.
Four years later in Albertville he was again the form horse coming into the Games. Favourite for the 500m and 1,000m he badly underperformed, coming in only fourth in the shorter event, and a dismal 26th in the 1,000m. Some said it was due to the soft ice which did not suit his powerful frame, the less charitable felt that Jansen was showing signs of being a choker in the big moments.
Jansen, despite the disappointments, kept on going. Due to the changing schedule for the Winter Olympics (it was moved to the years between summer Olympiads in 1994) he had to wait only two years for an opportunity to redeem himself in Lillehammer. Once again, though, he seemed to choke in his best event, the 500m. A slip during the race meant the hot favourite finished only eighth. His last chance, surely, would come in the 1,000m, but in this event he was ranked only seventh in the field. Perhaps the low expectations helped him. “Just skate,” he said to himself. “It’ll be over soon.” Finally, Jansen turned up. He set off fast and managed to maintain his pace. When the clock stopped he had recorded a new world record time of 1:12.43, a time that none of his competitors could beat. Ten years after his near thing, he had finally laid his demons to rest and won a gold.
His victory scenes were truly emotional. He took his eight-month-old daughter, named Jane in memory of his sister, in his arms as he took his lap of honour. Jansen was in a daze. “I was shaking,” he said. “I guess my first thought was ‘Finally it’s happened for me.’”
His job finally done, he retired soon after the Games and dedicated himself, amongst other things to the Dan Jansen Foundation. Its main purpose, to fight the disease that had killed his sister.
8. Ice hockey comes home – Canadian Ice Hockey, Vancouver 2010
There are many countries around the world where a sport has become inextricably linked to that country’s sense of national identity. Think rugby union and the All Blacks in New Zealand, football in Brazil, cricket in India. Perhaps nowhere, though, is the link stronger than in Canada with the sport of ice hockey. The country invented the sport, institutionalised the sport and, for most of its history, dominated the sport. It matters a lot to Canadians.
In the early years of the Winter Olympics they were nigh on unbeatable. They won six of the first seven Olympiads and were only beaten in 1936 by a GB team comprised mainly of players who had grown up in Canada. Their fortunes suffered a downturn in the days of ‘shamateurism’, when teams from the Eastern bloc were state-sponsored and effectively professional, but they returned to the top once NHL players were allowed to compete. After winning Olympic gold in 2002, however, they fell back to earth in 2006, finishing only 7th after a dismal campaign. With a home Olympics in 2010 (Vancouver) on the horizon, and another failure unthinkable, a radical rethink was required.
Out went the management team of Pat Quinn and “The Great One” Wayne Gretzky, and in came a total change in the philosophy of team selection. The focus shifted from grit and experience, to youth, elite speed and versatility. A key symbol of the change was the inclusion of 22-yr-old Sidney Crosby, left out in 2006 due to his relative youth, but about to become a hero of 2010.
Things did not go entirely to plan at first. A loss to the US team in the group phase meant they needed a qualification playoff to reach the knockout stage. Things then started to click and they got past Germany and Russia easily, before a less than comfortable semi-final win against Slovakia took them to the final. Fighting them for gold would be their oldest adversaries and the form team of the competition, the US.
The final was, as expected, a close, hard-fought encounter. Canada took the lead in the first period, then extended it in the second before conceding a slightly fortunate US goal. They had chances to pull away in the third, but allowed in a late equaliser so the game went into a golden goal overtime. It took seven minutes and 40 seconds for Canada to score the critical goal, a shot from the left from Sidney Crosby beating the US goaltender. The players went wild as did the hugely partisan crowd of nearly 18,000 in the arena. Indeed, as did most of Canada – it’s estimated that two thirds of the population were watching TV when the overtime goal was scored, the highest TV audience ever in the country.
The win for the men actually completed a beautiful double for the home nation. Their women had also beaten the US in their final for a third consecutive Olympic gold. For a country built on ice hockey, nothing could have been better.
7. The redemption – Lindsay Jacobellis, Snowboard Cross, 2006 & 2022
The addition of snowboarding and events like the half pipe and freestyle to the Winter Olympics has brought a different spirit to what were traditionally quite a serious Games. A little more rebellious, creative, freeform, fun, younger, the boarders tend to have a different mindset.
Lindsay Jacobellis, a 20-year-old American boarder, demonstrated this to her massive cost in Turin 2006. Competing in the Snowboard Cross Final, a four-person race down a winding banked course across numerous rollers, she had established a comfortable lead over Tanja Frieden of Switzerland. As she approached the final jump, she knew she could not be beaten so did what boarders do, she showboated with a celebratory ‘method grab’ in mid-air. Unbelievably she missed her landing, fell and allowed a stunned Frieden to overtake her. Here’s how the BBC commentator described it. “This is a lap of honour for Jacobellis. The American’s … OH! Drama. Jacobellis is down. Oh, look at her! FRIEDEN! FRIEDEN! This is incredible. Linsday Jacobellis has thrown a gold medal away in the last 100m. Oh, what has happened … What on earth was Lindsay Jacobellis thinking. This is ridiculous. I have never seen anything like it.”
Most athletes would have been devastated but, to her credit, Jacobellis claimed, “I was having fun. Snowboarding is fun, and I wanted to share my enthusiasm with the crowd.”
As time passed, she may have grown to rue her act of ‘fun’ more and more. Although she won gold after gold at the World Championships, the Olympic title remained agonisingly elusive. In 2010 she had to take evasive action after a poor jump and slid out of her semi-final; in 2014 she crashed out when leading her semi-final; in 2018 she made the final, but made a small error when leading and finished 0.03 seconds off the podium. She must have felt that her time would never come, but she kept coming back for more. In 2022, she got what would surely be her final opportunity in her fifth Olympics.
She progressed reasonably comfortably to the final where she came up against Trespuech of France, O’Dine of Canada and Brockhoff of Australia. There was never much in it, but Jacobellis went to the front early on and never relinquished her position. As she crested the final hump there was no showboating this time and no loss of concentration. She crossed the line 0.21 seconds ahead of the Frenchwoman. At 36-years-old, and 16 years on from her inglorious failure, Jacobellis had finally laid the ghosts of Turin to rest.
6. The unprecedented double – Ester Ledecka, PyeongChang 2018
In 2018 22-year-old Ester Ledecka of Czechia did something that had never been done before at a Winter Olympics. She qualified to compete in both the snowboarding and the skiing events at the same Games. Not content with achieving this distinction, she went many, many steps better by winning gold in both disciplines, a truly remarkable feat.
Ledecka’s real strength was in snowboarding, where she was amongst the favourites for the parallel giant slalom. Realistically, she would have viewed her skiing event, the Super-G (which came earlier in the Games programme), as a warm-up for the main event. She had competed in World Cup Super-G (and downhill) events during the season, but had never come close to the podium and was ranked outside the top 40 in the field.
In the Super-G the skiers get one run only with the higher ranked skiers going off earliest. Top ranked American superstar Lindsay Vonn kicked things off, but was below her usual standards. She soon found herself edged out of the medals, and after the seeded skiers had all gone it was Anna Veith of Austria who had the fastest time. With the ‘weaker’ skiers to come, the Austrian looked to have it in the bag. That was until 26th starter Ledecka came out of the gates. Perhaps her relative lack of skiing experience played in her favour as she took a more aggressive line than most. She certainly rode her luck on the run. Unbelievably, she crossed the line one hundredth of a second quicker than Veith. At first, she couldn’t believe it, assuming the timing equipment must have been faulty, but it wasn’t. She had come from nowhere to win a medal that no-one had predicted.
The win was as unexpected to her as it was to everyone else. In her post-victory press conference she refused to remove her goggles as she was embarrassed about her lack of make-up. She hadn’t bothered to put any on, assuming she that she would just slope off after the race unnoticed.
One gold in the bag, her victory in the snowboarding parallel giant slalom was a little more straightforward. It’s a demanding event, with two qualifying runs, then four knockout races, but Ledecka was up to it. She qualified fastest then won all her races to the final, where she beat Jorg of Germany. In a way she hadn’t achieved the impossible, because no-one previously had really questioned whether it was even possible. She had, though, achieved something remarkable and she still remains the only athlete ever to have done it.
https://www.olympics.com/en/video/golden-girl-ledecka-slaloms-to-unique-double
5. Win or bust – Franz Klammer, Innsbruck, 1976
In 1978 the BBC launched a new weekly sports show, Ski Sunday. Fronted by David Vine it was something of a risk, given that it featured sports in which Britons rarely competed at the highest level. The show though became a fixture in many households, and it was principally down to one man, the Austrian skier Franz Klammer.
Klammer was born in the alps and put on skis pretty much from birth, but was comparatively late to competitive skiing. Despite this he made the Austrian team – one of the toughest national teams to get into in any sport anywhere – and competed in his first World Cup race at 19. He quickly established himself and in 1975 he won every downhill bar one in the World Cup season. His form and fitness remained strong going into the 1976 Olympics, so he was installed as favourite for his home Olympics.
The pressure was well and truly on the 22-year-old as Austria, the hosts, were several days into the Games and yet to win a gold. The men’s downhill was seen as the marquee event, but Austria had not won it for 12 years. The omens were good, though. The 1964 downhill, won by Egon Zimmerman, had been run on the same Patscherkofel course that Klammer was about to come hurtling down.
And hurtling is a pretty good description. Klammer started 15th, the last of the top seeds to go. He faced a really stiff target set by reigning Champion, Bernhard Russi of Switzerland. The Swiss’s time of 1:46.06 looked unbeatable, but if anyone could do it, it was Klammer. Klammer knew he needed to attack the course to overhaul Russi, and he very nearly came to grief at the top of the run while only just holding it together. At the first checkpoint he clocked 32.24 against Russi’s 32.22. He continued to ski right on the edge, often looking like he was going to lose it, but still could not make ground up on Russi. At the intermediate checkpoint he was a little further behind with 1:13.24 against 1:13.05. Klammer, though, was renowned as a fast finisher and taking the tightest lines he could, he sped to the finish. His target was 1:46.06. When he crossed the line the clock stopped at 1:45.73. The Kaiser had done it for his country – he had won the big one.
Such was the strength of Austrian skiing that Klammer could not make the team to defend his title in 1980. He did qualify for Sarajevo in 1984 but was by then a little past his best. He was still good enough, though, to record his final World Cup win on the legendary Hahnenkamm at Kitzbuhel, a slope he had made his own. He retired from ski racing soon after, and Ski Sunday has never been quite the same since.
4. Unbeatable – Eric Heiden, Lake Placid 1980
For a sport that occupies only the tiniest of niches in the USA, it is perhaps surprising that long track speed skating is the sport that has delivered more Winter Olympic medals for the US – 71 in total – than any other. Great American skaters have included Bonnie Blair, winner of five gold medals over four Games, Shani Davis, the first black athlete to win an individual gold at the Winter Olympics and Dan Jansen, emotional winner in 1994. Standing above them all is the figure of Eric Heiden.
Heiden had dedicated himself to skating as a teenager, and competed at his first Games in Innsbruck 1976 aged only 17. He placed well down the field, but his development was rapid and only a year later he won the overall title at the 1977 World Championships. He repeated the act in 1978 and 1979, showing a combination of poise, power, technique and, critically, an ability to live with pain.
He entered the 1980 Games as the undisputed number one in the world, and with a chance to win five gold medals. He was considered most vulnerable in the shortest event, the 500m, and this came first, with a tough challenge coming from 1976 champion, Yevgeny Kulikov of the USSR. Heiden brushed this off, recording a new Olympic record to win gold. With this in the bag, it became a bit of a procession. He won the 1,000m, the 5,000m and the 1,500m (which included a small slip) all in new Olympic records, leaving only the 10,000m for the complete set. The night before the race, though, Heiden attended the US-Soviet Union ice hockey match, the ‘miracle on ice’, and was so amped up that he struggled to get off to sleep. Even this, though, could not deter him, and he produced not only an Olympic record, but also a World record to win his fifth gold medal out of five.
Heiden always seemed remarkably unimpressed by himself, and his medals. “Heck, gold medals, what can you do with them?” he said. “I’d rather get a nice warmup suit. That’s something I can use. Gold medals just sit there.” In fact, he retired from speed skating shortly after the Games and switched to cycling, in which he also became world class, competing in the 1986 Tour de France. He also did pretty well in his professional career, becoming an orthopaedic surgeon of some repute. All-in-all a special guy.
3. Curling comes home – GB Women’s Curling team, Salt Lake City 2002
Outside of Scotland, where the sport originated, it’s fair to say that not many people in the UK would have been too familiar with curling before its reintroduction to the Winter Olympics after 74 years in 1998. Nonetheless, one famous night in February 2002, around 6 million Britons tuned in after midnight to watch Rhona Martin and her GB curling team compete for the biggest title of them all. They would experience a magnificent roller-coaster of a contest.
The five-person team (four plus a sub) led by Martin came perilously close to not being selected for the Olympics. A team led by fellow Scot Julia Ewart was better placed to go, but just missed selection when they failed to make the final at the 2001 World Championships. Martin’s team was selected, but a serious knee injury for the skipper, then a bad stomach bug nearly nipped her challenge in the bud.
At the Games, her team were very nearly eliminated at the first stage. Their modest 5-4 record in the group stage meant they had to get through two tie-breakers, against Sweden and Germany, to reach the knock-out stage. Having safely negotiated these, they had to face the strongest team in the competition so far, Canada, in the semi-final. A tense contest went to the final stone in the final end, which Martin managed to land in the house for a 6-5 victory.
The final was, if anything, even more nerve-wracking. GB went out to a two-stone advantage, but opponents Switzerland clawed it back in ends 8 and 9. GB had the advantage of throwing last in the 10th and final end, but when skipper Martin stepped up to the line, she had an incredibly tough shot to execute. She needed to nudge out a Swiss stone that was lying in the house, and do it with just the right amount of pace to leave her stone in position. Under the utmost pressure she delivered a perfect stone, and GB had won their first gold for 18 years.
On the team’s return home, they were reminded how high the standard of Scottish women’s curling is. They found themselves defeated in the final of the Scottish championships, so did not qualify for the next World Champs, which their opponents promptly won. Scotland, the home of curling, was now home to not only the Olympic but also to the World Champions.
2. The Miracle on Ice – USA 4-3 USSR, Men’s Ice Hockey, Lake Placid 1980
In the three or so decades before Olympic ice hockey was opened up to professional players, there was little expectation that teams from the west could compete effectively with those from the east. Teams from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia were amateur in name only, made up of ‘students’, ‘soldiers’ or other ‘professionals’ who in reality were full-time state-sponsored athletes. Those from ice hockey powerhouses like the US and Canada, by contrast, were made up of college players or those just about to embark on their NHL careers. The US team had surprisingly managed to win gold on home ice in 1960, but the ensuing 20 years had been entirely dominated by the Soviets. They had won gold in four successive Winter Games, while losing only once in 29 outings.
Although the 1980 Games were back on US soil, the Soviets remained hot favourites to win their fifth consecutive title. The format was two pools of five teams, with the top two from each pool proceeding to a medal group in which the country placed first would win gold. The Soviets utterly dominated their pool, winning all five games with a massive goal difference of +40. The US team, in the other pool, qualified well with four wins and a draw, a good result for an inexperienced team seeded only seventh at the start of the tournament.
The two teams faced off against each other in the opening medal group game. Despite the overwhelming odds, a partisan capacity crowd filled the arena, ready to cheer on their countrymen. For many, it was not just a hockey match, it was a symbol of the ideological struggle between West and East.
The Soviets got off to a good start, scoring first, but this was answered by a goal from Buzz Schneider, the only player on the US team to have played previously in the Olympics. The Soviets kept on the attack, scoring a second to retake the lead, but again the US equalised, this time scoring in the very last second of the first period. The second period was dominated by the Soviets but they could only put one past US goaltender Jim Craig, so the third and final period began with the game still in the balance at 3-2.
The third period saw the unimaginable come to reality. Midway through the period, American Mark Johnson tied the scores, then about a minute and a half later his teammate Mike Eruzione scored a second. 4-3 to the US, but still almost 10 minutes to hold out. Hold out they did, with Craig making several crucial saves. As the game entered its final moments, the crowd counted down the seconds and the final horn sounded with the Americans victorious.
The game was almost immediately described as ‘the miracle on ice’, leaning on the words of ABC sportscaster Al Michaels who described the last few seconds thus, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!!”. As it happens, the US team had not yet secured gold – they still needed to beat Finland, which they did in another come-from-behind win.
The backdrop of the Cold War certainly gave the game more significance than it would otherwise have had. Relations between the US and the USSR were colder than usual following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, with the US government in the throes of deciding whether or not to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. So, to many Americans it was seen as an ideological victory as well as a sporting one. As such, it remains hugely significant in US sporting folklore, being voted the top sports moment of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated in 1999. Even as recently as December 2025, the team were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President Trump.
1. Bolero – Torvill and Dean, Sarajevo 1984
On Valentines Day 1984, over 24 million people in the UK turned on their televisions to watch a modest duo from Nottingham perform a dance routine on ice in Sarajevo. The pair were Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, and their routine would win them one of the most memorable gold medals of all time in the Winter Olympics.
The pair were red-hot favourites to win. Since placing fifth at their first Olympics four years earlier, they had won every competition they had entered. World and European Champions for three consecutive years, they were hugely talented technically, but more than that, they had an ability to express emotion through dance that was unmatched by any of their competitors. One reason was that they chose to perform their longer ‘free dance’ to a single piece of music, whereas almost all other performers used medleys. This allowed for enhanced story-telling and characterisation, a skill in which they were coached by a legend of musical theatre, Michael Crawford.
In Sarajevo they looked nailed on for gold after the Compulsory and Original Set Pattern Dances, but they still had to come out and deliver in the Free Dance. They made their entrance and knelt down on the ice facing each other as the music of Bolero by Ravel struck up. Interestingly, their start was not just for artistic reasons. The shortest time they could edit their music down to (from its complete 17 minutes) was 4 min 28 seconds, 18 seconds more than Olympic rules allowed for. The time allowance, however, began only when the skating commenced, so for the first 18 seconds of the piece, the two Britons simply faced each other with their skates not touching the ice.
When they did start, what followed was four minutes of synchronised perfection. Veteran TV presenter Alan Weeks did not utter a single word of commentary as the duo danced to Ravel’s music. After they had finished, artfully draped on the ice connected by their fingertips, there was a brief wait for the scores to be announced. Their score for technical merit was superb – three perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s – but it was surpassed by their marks for artistic impression – an unprecedented nine perfect 6.0s! As the scores came up on the screens, the crowd went wild, TV audiences around the world went wild, grown men were in tears.
It’s impossible to do the dance any justice in words – instead I humbly suggest you simply watch it again.