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, and that as he was slower than his opponents, trying to challenge them directly would only increase his own chances of falling. Bradbury said that he was satisfied with his result, and 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.[19] After a period of delay, the judges upheld the result and did not order a re-race, confirming Bradbury's victory.
