From a golden goal on ice, to Eve Muirhead’s redemption moment and more, here are half a dozen Winter Games classics
The greatest show on Canadian ice, and it boiled down to overtime. For the Canada team, stacked with NHL talent, the pressure was immense; a loss in this high-profile final might have soured the entire 2010 Olympics. A rivalry with the USA that, on paper, has been largely one-sided – Canada’s men’s ice hockey dynasty has long reigned supreme – suddenly felt terrifyingly and gloriously level. The USA, refusing to be a footnote, had clawed back a 2-0 deficit in the men’s gold-medal game with Zach Parise snatching an equaliser in the dying seconds. Then, seven minutes into sudden-death overtime, the 22-year-old Sidney Crosby, a man built for the biggest moments, slipped the puck between Ryan Miller’s pads with a flick of his wrist. A gold-medal-winning goal, for ever immortalised as “The Golden Goal” and considered an iconic moment in Canadian sports history.
Sixteen long, unforgiving years. That was the sentence Lindsey Jacobellis served after Turin 2006, when a premature, unnecessary celebratory method grab on the second-to-last jump of the snowboard cross final cost her gold. The showboating was a needless flourish in a simple four-person race and led her to botch the landing and fall just yards from the finish line. Tanja Frieden of Switzerland seized top spot and relegated Jacobellis to a humiliating silver. She became the living embodiment of counting your chickens. But in Beijing 2022, in her fifth Games, Jacobellis made no mistake. The most successful snowboarder in her event for over a decade, she led from the gate, kept her head down, and crossed the line with a cry of unbridled joy. At 36, she became the oldest American woman to win a Winter Olympic gold, finally burying the past with a vengeance.
