Classic Olympics gaffes

While Shaun White was busy making Olympic history dropping his signature, gold-medal winning Double McTwist at the 2010 Vancouver Games, some of the more sensitive among us were more concerned with the vulgar language caught on NBC cameras from his coach, Bud Keene. Whatever your take, it made for compelling television.

While not an athlete faux pas, Reebok's shortsightedness in supplying a team full of Nike spokesmen with warmup gear at the Barcelona Games proved to be one of the biggest gaffes is sports marketing lore. Led by Michael Jordan, several Dream Team members either draped the American flag over or covered up the Reebok logo during their historic medal ceremony, costing Reebok millions of eyeballs that they were certainly counting on. Come to think of it, wasn't Dan & Dave in 1992 as well?

Better lucky than good, right? At the 2002 Winter Games, Australia's Steven Bradbury found himself a distant fifth of five in the 1,000-meter short track speed skating final, watching Apolo Anton Ohno battle the lead pack in search of his first gold medal. Then chaos ensued. South Korea's Ahn Hyun-soo made a questionable move inside of Ohno approaching the final turn and sent all four front-runners crashing to the ice. Bradbury, trailing far behind, avoided the tangle of bodies and crossed the finish line for gold. As for Ohno, he crawled across the line for silver and later claimed gold in the 1,500 meters.

Log this one in the bad decisions file. At the 2008 Beijing Games, Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian became the fourth athlete stripped of his medal that summer. The other three were for doping. His was for petulance. After a disputed call cost him a match in the Greco-Roman 84-kg semifinal, his teammates had to restrain him from going after the official. He won the bronze medal match, but didn't cool off in time for the medal ceremony, where he ditched his medal on the mat and walked off. The IOC kept the medal and kicked Abrahamian out of the athletes' village.

One of Team USA's more charming athletes in recent years, snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis is sadly most associated with coming up short in Turin in 2006. Holding a big lead at the final jump of the snowboard cross medal race, Jacobellis pulled a backside method grab (translation: showboating) and crashed to the ground. Switzerland's Tanja Frieden passed her for gold before Jacobellis recovered to claim silver. She came up short of the medal round four years later in Vancouver.