Which sporting result most broke your heart?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Got thinking about the thread in football, and though we should have a similar one in sport.

Mine almost drop out by default, because I was a fan of probably the two most notable chokers in history, Greg Norman and Jimmy White.

The two Jimmy White finals that even now I can't bear to think about were the 1992 one, 14-8 up and he lost 10 on the trot, and then of course 1994, in among the reds in the very last frame needing maybe 30 more points to win the title and he bloody missed a straight pot.

Greg's capitulations were so numerous they're probably not worth reeling off, but I'll have a go:

1986 Masters - middle of the last fairway, needing a par to tie Jack Nicklaus and go into a playoff. Bogeys after a wild shot into the crowd.

1986 PGA - 4 shots clear with 11 to play. Lets Bob Tway make those shots up then watches him hole out from a bunker at the last to win.

1987 Masters - Has to watch Larry Mize hole a 40-yard chip shot to win the playoff.

1989 Open - Norman costs himself the championship in a playoff with Mark Calcavecchia by improbably driving the ball too well up the last hole, 330 yards into a pot bunker from which he couldn't get out of.

1995 US Open - Norman drives his way out of the title, dropping shot after shot and letting Corey Pavin ghost past him during the final round to win.

1996 Masters - absolutely the worst of them all. Greg blows a six-shot lead in the first eleven holes of the final round, and goes on to lose to Nick Faldo - Nick Fucking Faldo ! - by a further five shots.

To those, for me personally, I would add the 1991 Rugby World Cup Final, with Campese's cheating; the 1986 Men's Singles Final at Wimbledon (I was a big Ivan Lendl fan, for some reason) and possibly the most randomly of all, the 1992 World Darts championship final, which Mike Gregory lost to Phil Taylor on a sudden-death leg at the end of the last set. Gregory was a shy, unassuming lad from Somerset (I'm from Devon) and even then it was obvious the young Taylor was a loud, brash bully.

[ursus arctos]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Anyone who has read a baseball thread on here, will know what this is a link to.

[Incandenza]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

UCLA vs. Miami, 1998 - one win away from going to the first BCS football championship, looking forward to the possibility of UCLA's first undisputed championship in football and we can't tackle worth a damn. "Settle" for going to the Rose Bowl, where we are run over by Ron Dayne and Wisconsin.

UCLA vs. Florida, 2006 - lose in the national championship game to this guy:



Lakers vs. Celtics, 2008 - Fuck Boston.

[Guest]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

I don't think I will ever get over the 2009 AFL grand final. St Kilda, after the greatest home and away season in the club's history (19-0 at one point), became the first team ever to lead at the end of each of the first three quarters of a grand final and lose, Geelong sneaking undeservedly ahead in the last 5 minutes.

To make matters worse, Geelong were awarded a goal for a shot that hit the post and, late in the game, with St Kilda 2 points up we were denied the most blatant free kick you will ever see 35m out which would have sealed the game.

In 2010, St Kilda lost again in a replay after being held to a draw by the cruellest bounce of a ball imaginable in the first game. The truth is we didn't deserve to win in 2010 but it made 2009 hurt all the more.

[Wyatt Earp]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

I dunno, I've realised I'm in a slightly tetchy mood tonight--end of the week and I'm knackered and so on--but I just find myself thinking "Broken your heart? Come on!"

I mean, I've done heartbreak and I've done, I dunno, Newcastle blowing a twelve-point lead, indeed I actually did them at roughly the same time, and heartbreak is worse.

I suppose "Disappointed you quite a lot, so that even now you occasionally think of it when at a loose end" would make for too long a thread title, though.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

None of my biggest heartbreaks in sports have been on the field.

The day they called off the season in 1994, they year the Expos were the best team in baseball by a FUCKING MILE, the year we would have walked to the Series and not broken a sweat. That was the worst.

The day they took my Jets and put them in the middle of the fucking Arizona desert. That was the second worst.

By comparison, the actual on-field/pitch/ice losses have all been easy to handle.

[Wyatt Earp]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Yes, I reckon, say, Wimbledon fans have a solid case for heartbreak, to be fair.

[Incandenza]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Toto Gramsciddu wrote:

None of my biggest heartbreaks in sports have been on the field.

The day they called off the season in 1994, they year the Expos were the best team in baseball by a FUCKING MILE, the year we would have walked to the Series and not broken a sweat. That was the worst.

Back then the SF Giants were my favorite team, and my dad got us tickets on the third base line field level to see them play the Dodgers toward the end of the season for my birthday. Matt Williams was on pace to break the home run record that season. Then the strike happened. And it turned out that Matt was juicing.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Giants came to town for a 4-game stand just after the all-star break and swept us, which was a bit of a downer. But we proceeded to win 21 of our next 23 games until the strike shut us down.

The best game in that run was a 7-0 win over the Dodgers, with Rondell White getting all 7 RBIs. And he was back on the bench the next game because he was our fifth outfielder (or possibly fourth by that point because Walker had blown his rotator cuff and was playing first base).

[Amor de Cosmos]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

It's probably yet to come — sometime between April and June this year most probably — until then, overtime seventh game Stanley Cup Final, Madison Square Garden, June 1994. We deserved to win. Deserved it so much.

[matt j]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Hmmm...

The Longhorns 3-66 loss to UCLA back in 1997 was probably the beginning of the end for me giving much of a shit about American football. It was a horrible season for both the Longhorns and the Cowboys, and I'd been too invested in both for too long. I switched to amused indifference, and have stayed that way since.

(Then around November of that year, Shevchenko scored a hat trick against Barcelona, and I'd moved on completely.)

[Femme Folle]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

No question: Baseball's World Series 1986.

I mean, come on, Bill, the Mets?? FFS.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

While revising for my finals at university, my life revolved around revision and the 1992 World Snooker Final: Jimmy White vs Stephen Hendry.

My flatmate and I had concocted a scenario where the swashbuckling White would defeat RoboHendry and we would both get 2:1 degrees.

Jimmy was 14-8 up, then managed to lose 14-18.

We both got 2:2s.

[Borracho]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Dublin losing to Meath in the Leinster championship in 1991 (after three replays -- unprecedented) was pretty bad.

Keith "wrong side of the" Barr drinks in my local. He missed a penalty in the fourth game, not helped by that cunt Mick Lyons running alongside him to put him off as he took it.



The stupid blind bastard referee did not see fit to let Keith take the kick again. Meath won by a point.

Dublin being beaten by Cork, the least inspiring All-Ireland champions I can remember, last year was pretty bad too, especially given that they were winning for about 69 of the 70 minutes.

[Tony C]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Great Britain's 10-14 defeat to Australia at Old Trafford in the 1990 RL Ashes second test.

GB had won the first test the week before and were leading in this game with a minute or so to go and were actually in possession in the Kangaroos half. Australia turned the ball over and broke away to score - due it n no small measure to a clear obstruction on a GB tackler that would have saved the try and ultimately won both the game and the series as well as breaking the (still ongoing) Australian dominance of Ashes tests. The French referee was the only person in the stadium who didn't see the offence.

I felt physically sick at the injustice of it all.

Almost inevitably the Australians played out a tactical masterclass the following week at Elland Road to secure a 2-1 series win. But that OT result hurt.

[Gerontophile]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

As a baseball fan, ok, a Yankees fan, the one that hurt was 2001: except, it wasnt/didnt: the Yankees were 'Vincible and the team that beat them had the best 1-2/3 EVER.

Mariano flapped for the only time I can remember, and, if I were a humanist film director, it would have been the perfect end, to a perfect series, after a really bad time for all concerned (factfans:2001)

It pissed me off no end, until I realised that I had just seen a magnificent sport, being played magnificently, by every magnificent participant (owner of the Yankees, notwithstanding).

The D-Backs that year were almost unstoppable. The Yankees WERE... poor Mo...

Its difficult to speak of anything other than football, and this is the wrong section.

I always loved Stephen Hendry (scottish etc), but my heart went out to Jimmy White several times.

But that isnt it.

Sporting result... I cant honestly answer, other than the day Dawn Run died in a stupid race in a place called 'Auteil' and there were these spiky fences, and she fell over them because of the sheer spikiness, and fucking died.

Stupid. (Me, and the idea that, oh never mind, I am into Desert Orchid territory here (horsey stuff, for the non Brit/Irish contingent))

Oh, and Scurlogue Champ, running backwards, on TV, Wednesday night, in the race of champions, against, Ballyregan Bob, My Tootsie and Glenowen Queen.

I cried that night. The race was too short for the poor fucker to catch up, and so, it stopped, and went the other way.

[Outside Agent]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Like AB above, Dublin losing to Meath in the third replay of the 1991 GAA Championship saga was the greatest sporting heartbreak. It ticked every box. Dublin's defeat to Down in the 1994 final runs it close though, with the obligatory missed penalty proving decisive.

There's three other sporting occasions that made me sick, and that the passage of time has not healed. Two of them are mentioned by Rogin - Jimmy White losing the deciding frame in the 1994 World Final, and Mike Gregory losing the 1992 Darts Final. The other is Sonia O'Sullivan being pipped to gold by Gabriella Szabo in the Women's 5,000m Olympic Final in Sydney. If there was one sporting match/race that I could somehow go back and alter, it would be Sonia getting up for gold in that race.

[Incandenza]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Matej wrote:

Hmmm...

The Longhorns 3-66 loss to UCLA back in 1997 was probably the beginning of the end for me giving much of a shit about American football. It was a horrible season for both the Longhorns and the Cowboys, and I'd been too invested in both for too long. I switched to amused indifference, and have stayed that way since.

Not surprisingly, if we were doing a "which sporting result left you overjoyed..."

[The Exploding Vole]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

But surely it wouldn't be sport if it didn't break your heart?

[Guest]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

Bradford Bulls 18 St Helens 19, Super League Grand Final 2002.

St Helens. Fucking, fucking St Helens. They occupy my thoughts and invade my dreams. This weeping sore of a rugby team spent the formative years of Super League fighting it out with the mighty Bulls to be crowned the most dominant team in the sport and thanks to their uncanny ability to spawn and cheat their way to victory in the games that matter, they are the team that came out on top. I could have chosen other games against them, but this one was the ultimate kick in the nuts, for not only did Bradford have a perfectly good try disallowed (not for the 1st time in games between the 2) but, after Saints had dropped a goal with a minute remaining, their skipper Chris Joynt then had the gall to perform a voluntary tackle right under the ref's nose with seconds remaining. If the ref had applied the letter of the law, Bradford would have had a penalty about 40 yards from the posts to claim victory. James Lowes followed the ref off the pitch calling him everything, and Saints had broken my heart. Again.

[danielmak]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

LA Kings losing to Montreal in the 1992-93 Stanley Cup Finals after McSorley's illegal stick changed the momentum of the series still hurts.

I would also say Mike Tyson's loss to Buster Douglas but over time Tyson's actions have removed the sting.

[G-Man]

Which sporting result most broke your heart?

1999. Alan Donald loses his bat, Lance Klusener runs in the wrong direction, Aussies crow, umpire doesn't remember whether Fleming bowled a no-ball.

WoE is right that heartbreak is much worse than any sporting defeat a spectator might suffer, but the emotional shock this tied game produced exceeded notions of bitter disappointment. I have recovered from bad loves, but I'm still scarred by that game.