He won the race, but I disagree that he "raced better than anyone else". Basically like someone winning the 100 metres at the Olympics with a 15 second time because everyone else did a hammy.
He got lucky at the 2002 Olympics without question. This is also a guy who needed 111 stitches in his quad after it was sliced open in a previous skating accident and had his c4 and c5 veterbrae broken in a separate accident in 2000 from which doctors told him he would not skate again.
He had also fallen over in previous Olympics in 94 and 98 when he was at his peak and was a genuine contender. Put simply he had had his fair share of bad luck and with his experience was able to acknowledge that with his prior injuries and mounting age he didnt have the raw pace of the others so developed a strategy to stay out of trouble which paid off better than he'd dreamed
From Bradbury
In an interview after winning his gold, referring to his two career and life threatening accidents,
[21] Bradbury said "Obviously I wasn't the fastest skater. I don't think I'll take the medal as the minute-and-a-half of the race I actually won. I'll take it as the last decade of the hard slog I put in."
To write off his success as undeserved is petty based on everything leading up to that moment and ignores the amount of work he did to get to that point. Also, to his credit I've never once seen him not acknowledge that he was indeed lucky on the day or pretend that he was not waiting for the others to fall over
And rather than be slighted by the doing a Bradbury legacy he's left he embraces it and appreciates the humuor of it