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Speaker 1: Christ Yeah, Welcome friends to the Christian o'connells Show podcast.

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Speaker 2: Christian O'Connell's Golden Moments coming down to the Games in Paris.

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Speaker 2: Stephen Bradery at the two thousand and two Salt Lake

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Speaker 2: City Winter Games, putting gold in the one thousand meters

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Speaker 2: short track speed skating final.

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Speaker 1: The morning of is so exciting. The adrenaline is pumping

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Speaker 1: nervous energy. That's what an athlete lives for. I remember

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Speaker 1: sitting in the change room and you could just feel

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Speaker 1: the energy in the stadium even underneath it. In the

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Speaker 1: change room, sixteen and a half thousand people chanting in

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Speaker 1: American superstar Apollo Ono's name. I knew that I wasn't

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Speaker 1: as strong as the other skaters in the final, and

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Speaker 1: my head told me that I needed to stay out

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Speaker 1: of the way because there's a good chance that some

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Speaker 1: of the other skaters in the final would go through

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Speaker 1: each other. Olympic Final in Salt Lake City. Nine laps

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Speaker 1: for thee thousand meters. We're coming into the final turn.

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Speaker 1: I've dropped off the pace ten or fifteen meters and

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Speaker 1: I see the Chinese gators Joe Short and Bloody try

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Speaker 1: to move on the outside of Apolloloner. He doesn't make

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Speaker 1: it a bump. Then he goes down and from there

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Speaker 1: the other three all got tangled up. I saw them

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Speaker 1: out of the corner of my eye or slide off

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Speaker 1: into the barrier. At fifty kilometers an hour from there,

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Speaker 1: I knew that I didn't have to skate. All I

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Speaker 1: had to do was glide. I was going to cross

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Speaker 1: the line first. I wasn't sure what the appropriate reaction

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Speaker 1: was in those moments. Wasn't sure if I should celebrate

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Speaker 1: or go and hide in the corner. And it took

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Speaker 1: quite a few minutes for the official result to come through.

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Speaker 1: But when I finally came through on the JumboTron with

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Speaker 1: the gold medals the name Stephen Bradbury next to it,

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Speaker 1: was a pretty awesome way to finish something that had

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Speaker 1: started twenty years ago the metal ceremony. My feelings are

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Speaker 1: probably still the same now as they were there. I

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Speaker 1: wasn't sure if I wanted to be the guy who

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Speaker 1: won the gold medal because the whole world fell over

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Speaker 1: in front of him. I get it that I deserve it,

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Speaker 1: but I'm the luckiest individual Olympic gold medals in the

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Speaker 1: history of sport. So that didn't sit one hundred percent

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Speaker 1: comfortably with me when I was going up onto the podium,

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Speaker 1: and to be honest, it still doesn't sit one hundred

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Speaker 1: percent comfortably with me today. But when the Australian National

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Speaker 1: anthem started to play, all of those emotions were put

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Speaker 1: aside and it felt like there was a minute and

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Speaker 1: a half that was mine. The Christian O'Connell Show podcast