Ahead of his second Olympics in Bormio, Norwegian skier Atle Lie McGrath said he would channel the advice of his coach, Kjetil André Aamodt, a Norwegian skiing legend who won eight Olympic medals. Mr. Aamodt told him, “No one cares if you finish fourth.”
Ouch.
But, in many ways, it’s true.
Why We Wrote This
For some, missing the Winter Olympics podium by a blink of an eye can be an athlete’s biggest disappointment. For others, however, the “tin medal” is all the motivation they need to do better next time.
The Olympic Games, of course, has more losers than winners. That’s part of what makes the elusive victory taste so syrupy sweet. But there is one loss that hurts more than the others: fourth place. Otherwise known as the “tin medal.”
“Only three girls are really happy after the race, and the rest are not happy. And especially the fourth place,” says German biathlete Franziska Preuss after her teammate, Vanessa Voigt, placed fourth in the women’s 15-kilometer individual event. She knows the feeling well. Ms. Preuss just missed the podium at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics. “It is really bittersweet, but one person will be fourth.”
Yes, one person has to be fourth. But at the Olympic Games, the difference between a victory jump on the podium with a shiny new bronze medal keepsake and fourth place can be determined by less than one point or a fraction of a fraction of a second, measurements of time and space that boggle the mind and require high-tech sensors to detect.
That fraction of a second, often faster than the blink of an eye and comparable to the beat of a hummingbird’s wing, is also the difference between having your name marked down in the Olympic history books and, well, not.
“I’m not angry with myself, I’m not disappointed, but I’m just – it’s just a tough place to be, fourth,” says British freestyle skier Kirsty Muir through tears last week, after her best slopestyle run of 76.05 was bested by Canadian skier Megan Oldham’s score of 76.46 to earn the bronze. Ms. Muir says she’s unsure what that difference of less than half a point equates to. A landing? A hand grab? She has no idea. “Obviously, I really did want to be on that podium,” she says, “but I’m gonna try and take the positives I can from this.”
“The positives” can be difficult to see immediately through tear-fogged ski goggles as the victory music plays and the medal ceremony podium gets assembled for others. But many Olympians find that perspective later, away from the lights and podiums, and sometimes success follows.
Ms. Preuss, the German biathlete, went on to win a bronze medal at the 2022 Winter Games and another bronze this year. Ms. Oldham, the Canadian freestyle skier who bested Ms. Muir, tells reporters after winning the bronze here in Livigno that she has been “seeking redemption” since the 2022 Beijing Olympics, when she came in – you guessed it – fourth in the big air competition.
That’s the thing about fourth place. It can be uniquely heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time.
Ahead of his bronze medal win in the men’s slopestyle competition, New Zealand skier Luca Harrington credited a fourth-place finish (calling it “not a nice position”) at a December 2024 World Cup competition as a turning point in his career. “That really lit a bit of a fire under me and gave me that hunger to want to go and get on that podium,” he says.
After U.S. skier Jacqueline Wiles missed the podium in the women’s downhill skiing event by 0.27 seconds, U.S. skier Paula Moltzan knew that her teammate would use “the worst position to get at the Olympics” to “fuel her fire.” And she did. Two days later, the two women were paired together for the team combined event and won the bronze medal.
Not every tin medal comes with a full redemption story, of course.
Mr. McGrath, the Norwegian skier, placed fifth in the giant slalom, and then didn’t finish the second run in the slalom event after skiing over a gate.
With one lap to go in the 1,000-meter short-track speed-skating final in Beijing in 2022, American skater Kristen Santos-Griswold, who had been in medal position for much of the race, was taken out by another skater. After “missing the podium by one spot,” Ms. Santos-Griswald had to step back and decide whether she could handle that kind of heartbreak again.
But after talking with coaches and teammates, Ms. Santos-Griswald says she worked to figure out how she can be happy “no matter how I skate.” Just this year, she finally had the courage to watch the video of that heartbreaking lap. She had been too content to settle for the bronze medal, Ms. Santos-Griswald realized, rather than racing for the gold medal. So, this year, she decided she would do things differently. She finished third in the quarterfinal, however, which wasn’t enough to advance.
“I definitely am hoping for [a medal],” at these Games or a future one, she told reporters after her race. “All I’m trying to focus on is the effort that I put in and how hard I try, and I’ve gone into every race giving it my all.”
Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters
U.S. speedskater Brittany Bowe knows what it’s like to nudge someone else off the podium, earning two bronze medals in her career: one in the team pursuit at Pyeongchang in 2018, and one in the 1,000 meters in Beijing when she edged out her fourth-place competitor by one-tenth of a second. Last week, she missed her third bronze when she placed fourth for the first time in the 1,000 meters by a 0.6 seconds. It was “obviously tough,” she says, describing the result as “the toughest position in the Olympic Games.”
Still, Ms. Bowe expressed a genuine pride in being a “contender” in a field of skaters that saw the Olympic record broken, especially at almost 38 years old in her fourth and final Games. And having her family in the stands this year brought her “more joy” than winning the bronze four years ago alone, because of pandemic restrictions on spectators.
In the men’s figure skating final, which saw an evening of unbelieve upsets, Korean skater Cha Jun-hwan was “proud” to be one point behind the bronze medal (it was actually less than one point, with a score of 273.92 to Shun Sato of Japan’s 274.90) because he says he “really tried my best” and has “no regrets.”
“It’s one higher than my previous Olympics in Beijing,” he told reporters of the previous Games, where he finished fifth.
Finding time to pause, regroup, and then push on is the recurring theme in the stories of those who miss the podium.
After letting herself “process” the slopestyle fourth-place finish, which included some time off the snow playing Nintendo, Britain’s Ms. Muir said she was ready to focus on the big air competition. After posting one of the top qualifying scores in big air, Ms. Muir looked like she might finally get her medal after landing her first two of three runs. But then, ahead of the third run, Ms. Muir was bumped out of medal contention.
She finished fourth. Again.
“I put it all on the line in the third jump, I went for it, and I can’t be mad about that,” she says. And while it’s “a bittersweet feeling now,” she expects soon to find the positives in two fourth-place finishes.
“In the moment, it’s hard to take in, just because obviously the only ones that get recognized are the ones on the podium…[B]ut I really do feel proud of my skiing,” says Ms. Muir. “Someone always has to be fourth, so I’ll take the burden.”
Associated Press
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Jacob Turcotte/Staff