They say lightning does not strike the same place twice.
Thanks to the spread out Milano Cortina Games, it did not happen here either, but nevertheless a rare occurrence did manage to take place twice in the same day a matter of hours apart from each other at this year's Winter Olympics.
First, on the famous Stelvio ski course, there was a tie for second in the men's combined team alpine ski as Swiss pair Marco Odermatt and Loic Meillard tied with Austria's Vincent Kreichmayr and Manuel Feller.
Then, that evening, Nikaido Ren and Gregor Deschwanden had to share the bronze medal in the men's normal hill ski jumping event.
"I could not imagine we would have the same points for a medal," Nikaido said afterwards.
That is not too surprising as it has only ever happened once before in Olympic competition, 46 years ago when another Japanese jumper was involved.
In the normal hill at Lake Placid in 1980, Hirokazu Yagi tied with East Germany's Manfred Deckert for silver.
It is a bit more common for alpine skiing — it is the seventh time it has happened in alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics — but it still does not happen every day.
Franjo Von Allmen secured his second gold of the Games alongside Tanguy Nef, while their compatriots Odermatt and Meillard claimed silver, 0.99 seconds behind — the exact same time as Kreichmayr and Feller.
At the Stelvio, had the legions of Swiss supporters wildly waving their flags in the stands at the base of the course, drowning out the ubiquitous heavy, pumping music to create a raucous atmosphere in the pleasantly warm, 7-degree Celsius sunshine.
"Celebrating a medal at the Olympics is a childhood dream come true," Feller said after the event.
"It's even better if you can share it with someone else."
He didn't actually mean someone else entirely, by the way, He was talking about his teammate, Kreichmayr.
Needless to say, to have two teams record the same time after negotiating 107 gates across over 4,000 metres of skiing is still quite impressive.
But, with Odermatt/Meillard and Kreichmayr/Feller both being awarded silver medals, it raised an interesting question — what happens to the bronze medals that were set to be awarded?
Well, according to the International Olympic Committee, the medals that are not awarded cannot be reused for future Games, for obvious reasons.
Each Olympic medal is a unique piece of art, after all.
The IOC told ABC Sport that they are typically kept by the Organising Committee.
Alternatively, "they are transferred to the Olympic Museum for archival and historical purposes".
Well, there you go.
Incidentally, in the case of Nikaido and Deschwanden, organising committees always produce extra medals in advance of their Games and have a supply at the event venue for this exact issue, to prepare for possible ties.
Overall, across Winter and Summer Olympics there have been 158 instances of medals being shared, with 32 instances at the Winter Games.
There have only ever been three instances of Australians sharing Olympic medals across Summer Olympics — it's never happened at a Winter Games. Yet.
High jumper Tim Forsyth was involved in a three-way tie for bronze at Barcelona 1992 with Hollis Conway (USA) and Artur Partyka (Poland).
In Beijing, Hayden Stoeckel tied for bronze with Russia's Arkady Vyatchanin in the men's 100m backstroke in 2008.
And then in Paris, Eleanor Patterson claimed a joint bronze medal with Ukraine's Iryna Herashchenko in the women's high jump.
Speed skating has had the most shared medals at the Winter Olympics with 12, although there have been none since the men's 1,000 metres event at Lake Placid in 1980, when Vladimir Lobanov (Soviet Union) and Frode Rønning (Norway) shared bronze.
That was the first and only instance of a tie in that sport since electronic timing was first introduced to speed skating at the 1972 Sapporo Games.
