Australian Steven Bradbury couldn't be blamed for looking a little confused Saturday night. His peroxide blonde hair was whipped into a style that could only be described as "frantic." The stud above his left eye was perched at a crazy angle.
The smile was the type someone wears after walking away from a car wreck.
Shock. Embarrassment. Disbelief. Relief.
Luck had upstaged destiny.
Bradbury won Australia's first-ever Olympic Winter Games gold medal, with a come-from-behind victory in the men's 1,000-meter short-track speedskating. He won it the way someone wins when he has exhausted all other possibilities ? by divine intervention.
Or by someone else's bad luck.
Or by default.
Something like that.
It wasn't as though anyone saw it coming. In the semifinal race, he was matched with China's Li Jiajun, Canada's Mathieu Turcotte, Korea's Kim Dong-Sung and Japan's Satoru Terao.
That's when the weirdness began. About to finish four out of five, he moved up to third when a skater ahead of him fell. Still, he remained one place shy of qualifying for the finals. But Terao was disqualified for impeding another racer, moving Bradbury to second. He had had made it to the finals by attrition.
Which probably should have used up his quota of good luck for one day.
In the finals, American favorite Apolo Anton Ohno was on the way to his first gold medal. Bradbury, as usual, was bringing up the rear. Chinese skater Jiajun Li would be disqualified for impeding on the last lap. Then on the last turn, Korea's Kim Dong-Sung and leader Ohno became entangled and crashed into the side boards.
Bradbury slid past untouched, hands raised, wearing a sheepish look.
"My initial reaction was jubilation," he said. "And then it was like 'This can't be right, everyone's going down; something's going to happen. This is not going to happen to me, especially with a freak accident like that.' But it hasn't. I'm smiling."
On the list of medal contenders, the 28-year-old resident of Brisbane ranked somewhere between low and absent. He wasn't supposed to win, he was just supposed to show up. His chances of winning gold were only slightly better than the Zamboni's.
He did have one Olympic medal to his credit, a bronze for being on the relay team in 1994. That was the same year he crashed on the last lap of a race, somersaulting through the air and impaling himself on another racer's skates. It took 111 stitches in his leg and four liters of blood to bring him back to normal.
And that was just the warmup.
In 2000, he broke his neck, crashing head-first into a barrier during a training run. He spent six weeks in a neck brace.
Short-track speedskating, it should be noted, is always an accident waiting to happen. It isn't just about speed and power, it's also about cutting in front of an opponent at just the right time. First person to finish, standing or otherwise, ends up the winner.
It's about an elbow to the ribs, a bump to the hip. Rules say no pushing, shoving, elbowing or tripping ? same as basketball.
And you know how well that works in basketball. Play strictly by the rules and you wind up going home early.
This is roller (demolition?) derby on ice ? fast, furious and crowded.
So it was, on the last turn of the last race, the world's luckiest man won a gold medal. On accident.
"It's good, but it doesn't feel right, you know?" said Bradbury. "I wasn't as strong as the other guys out there . . . but I'm gonna take it. I came to these games hoping to make up for opportunities where I didn't skate my best. I consider myself the luckiest man. God smiles on you some days and this is my day."
The kind of day nobody saw coming.
E-MAIL: rock@desnews.com