Most dramatic moments in each sport (potential knockout)

[Cesar Rodriguez]

I was up a ladder, painting the house. Almost fell off when this happened. Did Reading lose a playoff that year too?. I was up the ladder for that as well.

Yes, 2-0 up v Bolton with Stuart Lovell having the opportunity to make it 3 with a peno then Reading collapsed in the second half. Think that was Bruce Rioch's last game as Bolton manager before he joined Arsenal.

[ooh aah]

No one has mentioned anything from MMA yet so I'll nominate Chieck Congo V Pat Barry. Co-commentator Joe Rogan announced "it's over" twice, but then...

[Antepli Ejderha]

Julian Jackson's punch against Herol Graham, iirc he was losing the fight but came up with this.

[Janik]

Ali deciding 'yup, now' and coming off the ropes to flatten Foreman. Of course The Greatest does drama the best. How could he not?

[Jon]

"Football, Slippy G falling over v Chelsea in 2014. It's still farking hilarious four years later."

Equally, if not more hilarious, is John Terry missing a penalty in the Champions League Final in 2008.

[Janik]

Yes, 2-0 up v Bolton with Stuart Lovell having the opportunity to make it 3 with a peno then Reading collapsed in the second half. Think that was Bruce Rioch's last game as Bolton manager before he joined Arsenal.

From memory it was 2-2 at full-time, Bolton went 4-2 up in extra-time and then Reading started to fight back, pulling it back to 4-3 but running out of time.

That was during a period of wild play-off finals. A couple of years previously Swindon beat Leicester 4-3, with Leicester coming back from 3-0 to 3-3 with three quick second-half goals and then Swindon getting a very late winner. The year after Bolton-Reading IIRC was the Charlton 4-4 Sunderland game, followed by the most nerveless penalty shoot-out as the first 13 attempts were all scored, until it was Michael Gray's turn.


Mentioning Gray brings up the seam we have barely explore, drama through failure rather than success. Drama that can barely be watched. Golf has a lot of these. Doug Sanders missing a tiddler to win the Open, Jean van der Velde going paddling en route to carding a 72nd hole 7 when a 6 would have made him a major winner (van der Velde's entire 18th hole experience would be one of the extended 'moments' that ad hoc discounts). However Football probably tops the bill on this one as well - Asamoah Gyan, last kick off a World Cup QF, ball on the penalty spot, and then... Sickening, but inarguably very dramatic. Probably more dramatic than if he had converted.

[Wouter D]

Lindsey Jabobellis showboating her way out of an Olympic gold medal springs to mind.

[Satchmo Distel]

Ali deciding 'yup, now' and coming off the ropes to flatten Foreman. Of course The Greatest does drama the best. How could he not?

That's true for Round 8 but there's a myth that the fight was one-sided up to then. Ali had already done some counter-punching earlier. You can also see in hindsight that Foreman was knackered by this point and was never going to last more than another round or two.

[G-Man]

Couple of other cricket ones:-

SA vs Australia World Cup Semi Final 1999

That's the one for me. A proper ding-dong battle preceded that last over. Three balls to go, scores tied, the majestic Klusener on strike, with Donald just having survived a run-out. Just one little single needed. Well fended off, Klusener. Oh shit, why you're running, Klusener? Oh fuck, fucking run Donald. Oh no, Donald has lost his bat. Oh fuckohfuckohfuckohfuck. It was like a car crash unfolding before your very eyes.

Later, it was said that Fleming had bowled a no-ball. There's no TV footage to show whether or not he did.

[Incandenza]

I'm biased, but...UCLA v. Gonzaga in the Sweet 16 in 2006.

UCLA goes from being down by 3 points without the ball to leading by 1 with the best player in the country for Gonzaga crying on the court in a little over 20 seconds.

[pebblethefish]

Cricket, I think you've got to go for West Indies four sixes in four balls in the last over of the 20-20 final, where I used up an entire year's quota of swear words in five minutes

[Guy Profumo]

Red Rum vs Crisp

[Bored Of Education]

That's true for Round 8 but there's a myth that the fight was one-sided up to then. Ali had already done some counter-punching earlier. You can also see in hindsight that Foreman was knackered by this point and was never going to last more than another round or two.

Yes, well, that was the point of rope-a-dope - to get Foreman to punch himself out.

[KGR]

Red Rum vs Crisp

National Hunt - Pile-up at the 23rd, 1967 Grand National is more dramatic. 1973 is more a tragedy, in the Shakespearian sense. (As an aside, there's a photo of Crisp jumping Bechers which is the most 1970s sporting photo around, it's simply magnificent - there must be a great photos thread in this sub-forum somewhere?).

Speedway - I was going to suggest Penhall v Carter.

Great shout about Don Fox upthread - the try seconds before it makes it a dramatic few moments.

[Guy Profumo]

But Crisp v Red Rum is more bathetic.

[Fearful Symmetry]

That's the one for me. A proper ding-dong battle preceded that last over. Three balls to go, scores tied, the majestic Klusener on strike, with Donald just having survived a run-out. Just one little single needed. Well fended off, Klusener. Oh shit, why you're running, Klusener? Oh fuck, fucking run Donald. Oh no, Donald has lost his bat. Oh fuckohfuckohfuckohfuck. It was like a car crash unfolding before your very eyes.

Later, it was said that Fleming had bowled a no-ball. There's no TV footage to show whether or not he did.

Yeah, I've watched it time and again, and it's worth remembering that the king of cricket drama, Shane Warne, had until this game had a pretty indifferent tournament (Steve Waugh's autobiography gives an insight into how he was struggling with his form and personal life at the time) but he came on with SA 48-0 and cruising, and took 3 wickets for very little, and turned the match on its head.

[Crystal Staples]

Lillian Board in the second of these two races. She's running the anchor leg in the 4 x 400m relay in the 1969 European Championships in Athens and succeeds in running down the 400 metres Olympic champion right at the tape, setting a new world record for the event in the process. One of the most promising athletes that Britain has ever produced, she would tragically lose her life to cancer a little over a year after this race, at the age of just 22.

I had never heard of Lillian Board, or that race, but that's a fantastic finish considering the gap with 70m to go. I was thinking of the men's 4x400m from 1991 which similarly ended with the Brit overtaking the actual event champion from a few days earlier. GBR's tactics were to front-load, intending to build too big a lead for the USA to whittle down on the last lap. A brave decision but it didn't work out that way, and we began the final lap relying on a hurdler to overcome the world champion on the flat, and a 3 meter disadvantage.

I don't remember this bit but wiki says the "USA team were so shocked by the result, that even on the medal podium, they were still in disbelief at the result". Then of course the following year they brought Michael Johnson into the team and broke the World Record.

[Various Artist]

I remember being transfixed by that 4 x 400m in 1991 as a 12-year-old, with Kriss Akabusi amazingly running down Antonio Pettigrew on the last bend and beating him down the finishing straight. It makes you wonder what Akabusi could have done if he'd concentrated on the flat instead of the hurdles.

I also remember how surreal it felt seeing Pettigrew anchor the US team home to gold in the Sydney Olympics, when I was 21, as by then the 1991 World Championships felt about as long ago as the Ice Age and it totally threw me to discover he was still running let alone competing at the highest level.


Christ, I've just looked him up to work out how old he was (still only 23 in 1991, therefore 32 in 2000 – which was Akabusi's age in Tokyo), and have only thereby discovered that Pettigrew died in 2010 of an apparent suicide by sleeping pills. He'd admitted some years earlier to using performance-enhancing drugs and had been stripped of that Sydney gold among others. What a sad tale.

[WOM]

We watched this live and almost lost our minds. It will go down in Blue Jays baseball history.

Game 5...two out...and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V8W6_bD7bE

[Levin]

Oooh. An entry from today for this thread. Womens Handball Champions League Final.

It's the second set of extra time and there are 12 seconds left on the clock when Vardar, who are one goal down, get possession. Score here and it goes to a 7m shoot out. Vardar get it clear to the 6m line and then... well, it's one hell of a save.

https://twitter.com/ehfcl/status/995735675541565441

[ursus arctos]

Remarkable.

She looks a lot taller than 189 cm.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Probably no one else is old enough to remember Abebe Bikila winning the 1960 Olympic marathon in world record time running barefoot. I was twelve, it really was Boys' Own Paper stuff. It was the first Gold ever for Ethiopia too. And, of course, he did it again four years later (wearing shoes.)

[ursus arctos]

Excellent call. Especially given that Bakila and his family were forced to flee for the lives during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and lived under Italian domination for much of his childhood. The film of him running alone past the Forum and other monuments of Imperial Rome is particularly striking.

Paralyzed in a car accident in 1969 and dead of a cerebral hemorrhage four years later, Bakila's life is one of the most dramatic of any world class athlete.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I watched the end of the race live at my grandparents. To me the small dark man looked so small and frail in comparison to other athletes, most whom back then were well-fed and white. An effect enhanced, I think, by black and white television. My mother commented that "the poor soul looks like he needs a good meal. Look... he's got no shoes! Probably can't afford any."

[David Agnew]

Lindsey Jabobellis showboating her way out of an Olympic gold medal springs to mind.

In many ways, the BBC commentary, enhances the moment, if only because of the timing:

Jacobellis won gold at five of the seven World Championships between 2005 and 2017, but this remains her only Olympic medal. She finished fourth earlier this year, 0.003 seconds away from a bronze.

I had never heard of Lillian Board, or that race, but that's a fantastic finish considering the gap with 70m to go. I was thinking of the men's 4x400m from 1991 which similarly ended with the Brit overtaking the actual event champion from a few days earlier. GBR's tactics were to front-load, intending to build too big a lead for the USA to whittle down on the last lap. A brave decision but it didn't work out that way, and we began the final lap relying on a hurdler to overcome the world champion on the flat, and a 3 meter disadvantage.

I don't remember this bit but wiki says the "USA team were so shocked by the result, that even on the medal podium, they were still in disbelief at the result". Then of course the following year they brought Michael Johnson into the team and broke the World Record.

Don't forget that the third leg for the UK was run by John Regis, a 200m, whose second event was the 100m, rather than the 400m. He'd been part of the European Championships 4x400m gold medal team the year before, but had little experience in the 400m.

I'm not sure how much of it was tactics, over personal preference. Roger Black has said a few times that he never felt comfortable in the other laps of the relay, and preferred the first leg.