2002 Winter Olympics
Bradbury took an unlikely gold medal win in the men's short-track 1000 metres event at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympic Games. He won his heat convincingly in the 1,000 m, posting a time of 1:30.956. However, in the quarter-finals, Bradbury was allocated to the same race as Apolo Anton Ohno, the favourite from the host nation, and Marc Gagnon of Canada, the defending world champion. Only the top two finishers from each race would proceed to the semifinals. Bradbury finished third in his race and thought himself to be eliminated, but Gagnon was disqualified for obstructing another racer, allowing the Australian to advance to the semi-finals.
After consulting his national coach Ann Zhang, Bradbury's strategy from the semi-final onwards was to cruise behind his opponents and hope that they crashed, as he could not match their pace. His reasoning was that risk-taking by the favourites could cause a collision due to a racing incident, and, if two or more skaters fell, the remaining three would all get medals; additionally, as he was slower than his opponents, trying to challenge them directly would only increase his own chances of becoming part of a crash entanglement. Bradbury said that he was satisfied with his result, and he felt that, as the second-oldest competitor in the field, he was not able to match his opponents in four races on the same night.
In his semi-final race, Bradbury was in last place, well off the pace of the medal favourites. However, defending champion Kim Dong-sung of South Korea, multiple Olympic medallist Li Jiajun of China, and Mathieu Turcotte of Canada all crashed, paving the way for Bradbury to take first place and advancing him through to the final. In the final, Bradbury was again well off the pace when all four of his competitors (Ohno, Ahn Hyun-Soo, Li, and Turcotte) crashed out at the final corner while jostling for the gold medal. This allowed Bradbury, who was around 15 m behind with only 50 m to go, to avoid the pile-up and take the victory. Bradbury became the first person from a southern-hemisphere country to win a Winter Olympic event. After a period of delay, the judges upheld the result and did not order a re-race, confirming Bradbury's victory.
In an interview after winning his gold, referring to his two career- and life-threatening accidents, Bradbury said: "Obviously I wasn't the fastest skater. I don't think I'll take the medal as the minute-and-a-half of the race I actually won. I'll take it as the last decade of the hard slog I put in." He also said, "I was the oldest bloke in the field and I knew that, skating four races back to back, I wasn't going to have any petrol left in the tank. So there was no point in getting there and mixing it up because I was going to be in last place anyway. So [I figured] I might as well stay out of the way and be in last place and hope that some people get tangled up."
He later said that he never expected all of his opponents to fall, but added that he felt that the other four racers were under extreme pressure and might have over-attacked and taken too many risks. Bradbury cited the host-nation pressure on Ohno, who was expected to win all four of his events. Li, much like Bradbury himself, had won Olympic medals but was yet to take a gold medal, Turcotte only had one individual event, and Ahn had been the form racer at the Olympics so far. Bradbury felt that none would be willing to settle for less than gold and that, as a result, they might collide.
Bradbury had three other events at the 2002 Winter Olympics. In the relay event, the Australians came third in their heat in a time of 7:19.177 and failed to make the final. They came second in the B final and finished sixth out of seven teams. In the 1,500 m event, Bradbury came third in his heat, before placing fourth in the semi-final and being eliminated. He then came fifth in the B final to finish 10th out of 29 entrants. He was unable to maintain his speed through the competition; after posting a time of 2:22.632 in the heats, Bradbury slowed by three seconds in each of his next two races. In the 500 m event, Bradbury came second in his heat and was eliminated after coming third in his quarter-final. He finished 14th out of 31 overall.
