Crosby’s golden goal, Vancouver 2010
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.
Jacobellis’s redemption gold, Beijing 2022
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.
Maier’s crash and comeback, Nagano 1998
During the men’s downhill in 1998, Austria’s Hermann Maier lost control at a terrifying 120km/h, was launched into the air and cartwheeled through two safety nets before slamming into the snow. Fears about the severity of his injuries were short-lived, however, when Maier stood up, covered in snow, and shook his finger as if to say: “I’m OK.” His right shoulder and knee were badly bruised, but weather delays in Japan meant that he had time to recover enough to compete and three days later “The Herminator” returned to win gold in the Super-G and the giant slalom.
Torvill and Dean’s perfect Boléro, Sarajevo 1984
On Valentine’s Day in 1984, British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean transformed figure skating into pure theatre in Sarajevo. Taking the French composer Maurice Ravel’s building score Boléro, they created a flawless, 4min and 18sec narrative on ice that had the entire Zetra Olympic Hall crowd on their feet, waving flags. They received 12 perfect 6.0s and six 5.9s which included artistic impression scores of 6.0 from every judge, a feat unmatched in Olympic figure skating history. Their self-choreographed routine was watched by an estimated 24 million people in the UK, roughly half the country. Last year, four decades on from their historic gold-medal performance, the duo returned to that same Sarajevo spot to announce their retirement.
Heiden’s gold sweep, Lake Placid 1980
Amid the euphoria of the Miracle on Ice (the US hockey team’s improbable defeat of the Soviet Union), another American quietly made history. The speed skater Eric Heiden delivered a performance of dominance that sits among the greatest individual achievements in winter sport. Over nine days in Lake Placid, the 21-year-old won every men’s speed skating event, taking five individual gold medals, and setting Olympic records in every event, from the 500m sprint to the gruelling 10,000m race, where he set a new world record by more than six seconds despite waking up late and hurrying to make the race in time. Heiden was the most successful athlete at those Games, winning more gold medals than all nations except for the Soviet Union (10) and East Germany (nine). To this day, he remains the only athlete to pick up five individual golds at a single Winter Games.
Muirhead finally nabs curling gold, Beijing 2022
Eve Muirhead’s journey to the top of the podium was less a gentle curve and more a white-knuckle rollercoaster. After years of near misses and Olympic heartbreak, Muirhead led her Team GB rink – Vicky Wright, Jennifer Dodds, Hailey Duff and Mili Smith – to gold in the pandemic-impacted Games. They had scraped through qualification, and then barely survived the group stages. But in the final against Japan, they delivered a masterclass as Muirhead scored a four in the seventh end to clinch the 10-3 victory. She could not hold back the tears as she stood on top of the podium after securing GB’s only gold medal of the Beijing Games.
