His name is synonymous with unlikely and lucky sporting victories, but Steven Bradbury said hard work got him within reach of the southern hemisphere's first winter Olympics gold medal.
Luck took over in the final of the short track 1000 metres final at Salt Lake City in 2002, when Bradbury cruised past a pile up at the final corner to claim gold.
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Doing a Bradbury entered the sporting vernacular shortly after, and is still used almost 20 years later to describe lucky wins for athletes in any sport.
But it was the hard slog before that, waking early every morning and spending thousands of hours on the ice at Acacia Ridge, which gave Bradbury the chance to enter sporting history.
Bradbury spoke at the Logan Regional Chamber of Commerce's Business Breakfast this morning at Park Ridge Tavern, with business leaders and owners from a range of Logan firms listening.
He said the same principles could be applied to businesses looking to get ahead of competitors and bounce back from the impacts of COVID-19.
Steady progress towards goals, he said, was an approach which worked in both worlds.
"There's no point sitting on your hands and waiting," Bradbury said.
"The time for action is always now.
"You've got to write down the important things in your life, the short, the medium, the long term plan."
In Bradbury's time, the keys to success were passion and persistence.
"Nowadays, every single athlete and business person, they call it resilience," he said.
"It used to be called passion, persistence and determination."
It allowed Bradbury to remain inside the top 10 speed skaters in the world for more than a decade.
Bradbury represented Australia at four winter Olympics.
"And then I became an overnight success," he said, referring to the worldwide media storm after his 2002 win.
But it also saw him through some tough times on the ice. Bradbury was lucky to survive a serious accident, when a competitor's skate sliced his leg open, spilling four litres of blood onto the ice.
Bradbury needed 111 stitches.
He said being from south-east Queensland made it harder for him to make it in the sport.
"[It was] not exactly the centre of the speed skating universe," he said.
"You should have seen the sponsors lining up."
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