Greatest comeback from adversity to win a world or Olympic medal?

[walei]

Agree with the above. Not the greatest but I want to add Bourne and Kraatz to the list. After their major dumpage at the 1999 (?) GPF and Shae Lynn's surgery they changed coach and built back up to become World Champs.

[love_skate2011]

Irina Slutskaya has had a number of comebacks. Comeback from a poor season to win silver at the 98 Worlds. A comeback from a poor season, bad short program, and bad fall in practice, to nearly winning the LP phase at the 1997 Worlds. A comeback from a 3 year slump that hit its apex when she missed the 1999 World team and had many writing her off, to winning the Grand Prix final, Europeans, and going to Worlds as the favorite for the first time but finishing 2nd. Then of course her comeback from a major illness to her 2nd World title in Moscow and 2nd Olympic medal in Turin. I know she wasnt everyones cup of tea but definitely a fighter who stood up to adversity.

first that came in my mind too was Irina Slutskaya

[gk_891]

This may or may not count since there are so many different stories as to what had happened but some may count Grishuk & Platov's victory at the 1997 Europeans and Worlds as overcoming adversity. One version of the story that I had heard was that Natalia Linichuk really wanted to get rid of them after 1996 and push Krylova & Ovsiannikov to the 1998 Olympic gold. And after the 1996 Worlds, she basically left Oksana and Evgeni on their own and so Oksana and Evgeni trained by themselves and created their own programs until Tatiana Tarasova took them under their wings shortly before Europeans. However, I've heard other variations of this particular story where it's not particularly clear as to who left who so who knows.

Maybe also Klimova & Ponomarenko at the 1992 Olympics? They had overcome an extremely rocky relationship with their coach Natalia Dubova to the extent where they had to leave her for Tarasova, a steroid scandal the previous year and losing their world title to the Duchesnays (and then competing against the Duchesnays at the Olympics in their home country no less). I guess neither G/P or K/P are quite as dramatic as Nancy Kerrigan, Lu Chen, Irina Slutskaya, etc but they could still potentially count

[Moka-Ananas]

Elena Sokolova in 2002/2003 after having been off the Russian team for 5 years. That was really an impressive comeback.