The Greatest Underdog Stories in Sports

Bookmakers had them at 5000-1 to win the division before a ball was kicked, and that is the price you get when nobody rates a single player in your squad. They took the Premier League title with 81 points. Over 38 matches there is nowhere to hide a fluke, no soft draw to thank, no referee to blame. You can steal a match. You cannot steal a title.

Priced at 500-1 for the tournament against an England side quoted at 3-1, the Americans were semi-professionals: Frank Borghi drove a hearse, Walter Bahr taught school. On 29 June 1950 in Belo Horizonte, Bahr shot from 25 yards and Joe Gaetjens threw himself across it in the 37th minute. One-nil. The hastily assembled squad had trained together once.

Thirteen days earlier the same two teams met in an exhibition at Madison Square Garden and the Americans were crushed 10-3. The Soviets had taken gold at five of the previous six Winter Olympics. The US squad averaged 21 years old and was mostly amateurs, and on 22 February 1980 at Lake Placid the amateurs won 4-3. Everything measurable about those two teams said it could not happen.

Tied 21-21 at the break, which was already strange enough. What came after was not strange, it was unprecedented: 74-54 over a No. 1 seed on 16 March 2018 in Charlotte. Sixteen seeds had never beaten a one seed since the field grew to 64 teams. Twenty points. No buzzer-beater, no lucky bounce, just a beating handed out in public.

A 42-1 underdog got dropped in the eighth round, beat the count, and walked back out. Two rounds later at the Tokyo Dome, on 11 February 1990, an uppercut snapped the champion's head up and four more punches put him on the canvas for the first time in his career. The bout had been billed, without irony, as Tyson is Back.

Denmark were not even supposed to be in Sweden. They came in as replacements after Yugoslavia were disqualified when the country broke apart. Then, on 26 June 1992 at the Nya Ullevi in Gothenburg, John Jensen and Kim Vilfort scored and Germany lost 2-0. Late invitations to a tournament do not usually end with somebody lifting the trophy.

Bowled out for 183 at Lord's on 25 June 1983, which in a World Cup final is a total you apologize for. Kapil Dev's India then dismissed the West Indies, winners of both previous tournaments and playing a third final running, for 140 and took it by 43 runs. Across the two World Cups before that, India had won a single match.

Eighteen-point underdogs out of the league everyone treated as the junior one. Joe Namath said it out loud first, we're gonna win the game, I guarantee it, and then went and did it: 16-7 over Baltimore at the Orange Bowl on 12 January 1969. Calling the result in advance is the part that still irritates people. He was right.

Seven previous seasons without a winning record in any of them, and never a finish higher than ninth in a ten-team National League. Then 100-62, and Baltimore beaten in the World Series that October. Going from punchline to champion normally takes a decade of quiet building, a farm system, a plan. This one took a summer, and nobody in the sport saw it coming.

Ivory Coast arrived having won every match in the tournament without conceding a goal; Zambia had lost both finals they had ever reached, in 1974 and in 1994. Goalless at the Stade d'Angondjé in Libreville on 12 February 2012, then 8-7 on penalties. The ground sits a few kilometers from where the 1993 Zambia squad's plane came down.

Eighth seed against the defending champions, who had already beaten them twice that season. Villanova then shot 22 of 28 from the field, 78.6 percent, and won 66-64 at Rupp Arena on 1 April 1985. Forty minutes of near-perfect shooting is not something a coach can plan for. It is still the tape everybody puts on before a final.

Four-to-one against, aged 32, facing a champion who had put Joe Frazier down six times in two rounds and finished Ken Norton inside two. Leaning on the ropes and letting a heavyweight punch himself hollow is not a plan a sane corner writes down. Eighth round in Kinshasa, 30 October 1974: the right hand landed and the title moved.

One hundred and thirty-two years and not one successful challenger: that was the record anyone sailing against the New York Yacht Club carried to the start line. Australia II turned up with a winged keel the club fought to have ruled out, lost that argument, then won the series four races to three, race seven off Newport going to the Australians by 41 seconds in September 1983. The boat was quick, though.