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Four Jamaican sprinters show up to the Winter Olympics with a borrowed bobsled and pure determination, and John Candy coaches them there. "Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it's bobsled time" — the underdog sports comedy of a generation.
The 1992 Olympic basketball team wasn't just a team — it was a statement. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and nine others playing for gold in Barcelona, winning by an average of 44 points while their opponents asked for autographs. It was the moment American basketball became something the rest of the world would spend decades trying to catch up to.
Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks, molding college kids into the team that beat the unbeatable Soviets in 1980. Disney's Miracle on Ice movie — the one that made every gym teacher yell a little more meaningfully for a few years.
The red-haired "Flying Tomato" who won Olympic halfpipe gold in Turin in 2006, won again in Vancouver in 2010 with a victory-lap Double McTwist 1260, and piled up X Games medals in between. He had his own Ubisoft video games too.
Two sisters coached by their dad on Compton's courts, taking turns winning everything. For four straight majors in 2002 and 2003 the final was Williams versus Williams, and the first prime-time U.S. Open women's final outdrew college football.