Whatever happened to 'agony of defeat' ski jumper?
It's been nearly half a century since the term "agony of defeat" joined the lexicon of American sports.
To
this day, the phrase remains a broadcasting staple, whether it's
coverage of the Olympics or any number of sports. A Google search for
"agony of defeat" returns nearly 500,000 results.
With that in
mind, we revisit the viral video that made an indelible mark on the
sports world long before the era of social media -- the frightful ski
jumping crash from the opening montage of "ABC's Wide World of Sports."
Fans
of a certain age almost certainly remember the image of Slovenian
athlete Vinko Bogataj wiping out on the takeoff ramp and hurtling toward
a gallery of spectators.
Bogataj, then 22 years old and competing for Yugoslavia, suffered a
concussion and a broken ankle in a terrifying tumble at the 1970 World
Ski Flying Championships in Oberstdorf, West Germany. It wasn't long
before ABC began using the clip of the crash to accompany the phrase
"agony of defeat" in the "Wide World of Sports" introduction. With that,
Bogataj became famous in the United States -- quite literally by
accident.
(ESPN.com)
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