5 iconic moments from Winter Olympic history

 After feeling the Winter Olympic rush from the games in Beijing, here at 1xBit, we were inspired to take a look back at some of the most iconic moments of past games to get a taste of what moments might be the next to make their way into the history books.

Table of Contents:

1. Torvill and Dean

2. Steven Bradbury

3. Jamaican Bobsleigh Team

4. Shaun White

5. Ester Ledecká

Torvill and Dean

In 1984 Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean of Great Britain stunned the world with the highest scoring figure skating performance in history. For many, the orchestral piece they used called Bolero is now more synonymous with the skating superstars than the composer himself, Ravel. The duo captured the grace and fluidity of the piece perfectly over the ice, gaining top scores across the board for artistic impression. Interestingly, Bolero is normally a 15-minute piece. Imagine how dizzy you would be after doing jumps and spins for a performance that long!

Luckily, a clever composer managed to cut it down to 4 and a half minutes. Unfortunately, this was still too long for the 4-minute rule of the competition. Determined to use the piece, Torvill and Dean combed the rule book to find the 4 minutes only began when the athlete’s skates touched the ice. And, thus, the iconic image of Torvill and Dean beginning the first part of their routine on their knees was born.

To take us back to the present day, in 2022 Bolero has made history once again with the 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva becoming the first female figure skater to land a quadruple jump at an Olympic Games as she also performed to Bolero.

Steven Bradbury

In 2002 Steven Bradbury pulled off one of the most shocking victories at a Winter Olympics. The Australian was a complete underdog going into the competition at Salt Lake City. He scraped his way into the final after a competitor was disqualified in the quarter-final and in the semi-final most of his fellow racers fell and crashed out of the race.

What was to follow in the final were some of the 4 most chaotic seconds in history. As the athletes approached the final corner of the race Bradbury was dead last, that was until the rest of the field fell before him, meaning Bradbury simply had to glide over the line to victory. It was a disastrous yet glorious race, the perfect combination of an underdog story and a dramatic end twist which creates a real iconic moment.

Jamaican Bobsleigh Team

You know a moment is iconic when one of the biggest film studios in the world, Disney, decide to make a film inspired by the story. The film “Cool Runnings” is loosely based on the true story of the four-man Jamaican Bobsleigh team who competed in the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. With the warm sunny beaches of Jamaica not being the stereotypical images that usually come to mind when thinking about the Winter Olympics, the Jamaican Bobsleigh team captured the hearts of the world as a classic underdog story. The team’s legacy is still strong today and Jamaica entered their first female bobsleigh team into the 2018 Olympics.

Shaun White

Shaun White is the face of Olympic snowboarding having claimed Gold 3 times in the half-pipe event. It is difficult to narrow down his success-filled career to one moment, but if we had to choose one it would be his victory in the Vancouver Olympics. Having already claimed gold in 2006, White was the favourite of the 2010 competition, and he did not disappoint. He left the rest of the field snowed under with his giant score and just to rub salt in the wound he pulled out one of the greatest moves ever seen in competition called a double McTwist 1260 (or as White has nicknamed it “The Tomahawk”). The “flying tomato” earned his name as one of the greatest of all time.

Ester Ledecká

Fresh off the tail of Ledecká claiming gold at this year’s Olympics in Beijing, let’s look back at how she took the world by storm in 2018. We all knew someone in school that was good at everything and Ester Ledecká was definitely that girl. In 2018 she became the first ever athlete to win gold in two separate sports at the same Olympics.

Ester Ledecká is a world champion snowboarder, but first appeared at the games in South Korea in the Super Giant Slalom skiing event. She went into the competition ranked 49th in the world, a virtually unknown outsider, and came out Olympic Champion, beating her second placed opponent by 0.01 seconds.

Ledecká was as much in disbelief as the rest of the world was. In a priceless video clip, she is left in stunned silence as she crosses the line. To top off her impressive victory, she claimed her second gold in the snowboard parallel giant slalom seven days later. Just greedy isn’t it!