Wins

On Friday evening I went to the center to get something and noticed that there were a few thousand people gathered at the square, staring at huge screens. I didn't know what was going on and went to see what was on the screen - football, apparently. The very minute I was there, Finland scored their first goal against Liechenstein in the UEFA Championship qualifications, and the crowd cheered. 

I'm what you might call a bandwagoner. If someone is doing exceptionally well, well enough to become a meme or news outside of it's main audience, then I'll care for a short while. I didn't stay to watch the game, but on the bus on the way home I listened to the radio broadcast of the game anyway, and I thought how nice it would be for all those people at the square if Finland won. If I hadn't seen all those people be so excited, I wouldn't have known about the whole thing or cared at all.

This is generally considered to be the wrong way to care. You're supposed to earn the wins by sticking with your team through the hard times, disappointments and losses. A bandwagoner is only there for the wins.

I'm interested in good stories and seeing what makes people excited and interested, but I don't have teams that I follow. I don't care about sports or competitions if I don't personally know someone playing or if I'm not playing myself. I didn't have any normal sports hobbies when I was a child so that might explain part of it. (The voluntary fire brigade and folk dancing are both surprisingly competitive but so niche that it's hard to follow as just spectator sport.)

Despite all that, here are some games / battles / wins that I remember seeing on TV and for a very short while intensely caring about the outcome of it just because of the story. (Not included are elections that have actually meant something to me.)

Hockey Championship -95
Of course; where it all starts. I was 5 years old and it was past my bedtime. I had to go to bed but I didn't want to fall asleep before the game ended. I could hear the TV in the living room, excited voices. My mom came to the door to whisper that we won. I was so happy!

Mika Häkkinen wins his first Formula 1 race in -97
My dad has always been a Formula 1 fan, he watches all the races every time. It's the only "sport" anyone in my childhood family was ever interested in. Many weekends as a child were spent watching the qualifications and races, and the rivalry between Mika Häkkinen and Michael Schumacher was the stuff of legends. It was obvious to me then that Schumacher was the bad guy and Häkkinen was the good guy.
Formula 1 is the weirdest competition, because the drivers compete in pairs and some cars are so much worse than others that with the equipment available it's impossible to win a race anyway, let alone a whole Grand Prix. Behind this win there's actually a lot of controversy because a crash with Villeneuve disqualified Schumacher from the whole season and a whole conspiracy between the teams of McLaren (Häkkinen, Coulthart) and Williams (Villeneuve, Frentzen) to help each other went unpunished.

Tarja Halonen wins the Presidential Election in 2000
I remember watching the counting of the votes of the second round with my parents. I asked them who they think should win, but I didn't get a clear answer. My dad told me that it's a secret and against the law to tell who you voted for, so I had to make up my own mind.
The historical significance of electing the first female president was totally lost to me and I didn't yet know anything about political parties, so I picked my favourite mainly on looks. I chose Esko Aho because he had very sad eyes and I didn't want him to get any sadder. Unfortunately I couldn't find any of this on Youtube but here's some footage on Yle Areena:

Yle Elävä Arkisto - Suomi sai ensimmäisen naispresidenttinsä

Tatu and Eeka in Far Out(2001-2002) Season 2
Far Out was a Finnish reality show that lasted for two seasons and was a bit like Amazing Race but maybe more of a youth program, where competitors traveled in different cities doing small assignments and the audience would vote for who they wanted to stay on the show. Two friends called Tatu and Eeka became pretty famous for their funny antics. I found this clip and was sort of shocked at the casual racism against the romani in it! It was indeed a different time. Tatu Ferchen is nowadays the CEO of the Finnish branch of multinational media monstrosity Banijay Group that's responsible for all the shittiest and most watched programs on TV, like Temptation Island and Vain Elämää. It's pretty crazy that he got all the way there and it all started from this - the network offered these guys their own TV show solely based on them being so well liked by the audience in this program.
Honestly, at the time I didn't really get what was so great about them. I mostly pretended to understand because everyone at school seemed to love them.

Lordi wins Eurovision Song Contest in 2006
It used to be that "when Finland wins the Eurovision Song Contest" was a saying that was used when talking about something extremely unlikely that would never, ever happen. It was used right alongside "when Hell freezes over" and "when pigs fly". In 2006 I watched the contest during a training weekend with my folk dance group in some camping center in the middle of nowhere. When it was certain that Lordi was going to win, we all went outside to see if there were any flying pigs.
For several years afterwards, the Finnish media always thought that the chances to win were pretty good, and they were always shocked the next day when we did as horribly as ever. The chances to win were the same before and after Lordi - not very good. The way probabilities work though is that something that has a 99% chance of failing still succeeds one time out of a hundred. This was that one time.

Finland wins Hockey World Championship in 2011 and 2019
In 2011 I didn't watch the game, but through the walls I heard my neighbours shouting on all sides. I had Uutisikkuna on and it said that 10 000 people were gathered at the central square, so we went outside to see people swimming in the fountain. It was madness! In 2019 I lived a biking distance away and went by myself to see the celebrations again, because a bit of anarchy on a Sunday night is always fun to witness. I had this weird feeling while there that most people were there like me - rather to "see the celebration" than to celebrate themselves. Maybe it hasn't been long enough since the last time, so winning is just not as noteworthy anymore. How many times are we all gonna go torille until it gets old?

FIFA World Cup 2014
In the summer of 2014 I spent so much time depressed and unwilling to move from the sofa that I almost accidentally got invested in the World Cup, much to the detriment of my sports-adverse spouse. I tried to care about something and tried pickinga a team and rooting for them through the whole competition. My team of choice was Italy with old man Pirlo and hothead Balotelli, based on their 2-1 win against England. Italy sadly didn't even make it out of the group stage. I kept watching anyway, because the more interesting story turned out to be the tournament as a whole. How important the event was to Brazil as a football country, the sheer weirdness of the venues being built in the tropics just to be used a couple of times and controversies surrounding their construction and the cost of the event, and to top it all off the home team was not playing very well. Brazil managed to somehow limp to the semifinals but it wasn't considered much of an achievement, and they were absolutely crushed by Germany in an unprecedented 7 - 1 loss, ending in 4th place over all. It was amazing TV because it seemed like even the German team was feeling sorry for the Brazilians.

The International 2014
I can't even remember how this came about. I don't play or have ever played Dota 2 nor do I know anyone who does. I generally don't care about esports any more than any other sort of sports and I don't follow anything or anyone. However, for some reason, I remember being intensely invested in how a Chinese team called DK and especially a player called BurNIng fared in a yearly Dota 2 tournament called The International. Maybe I saw a trending clip on Reddit or something? Anyway. I watched all the games they were in, they didn't win, and I forgot all about them and the game they play.

Iceland in UEFA Euro 2016
Like who the hell wasn't on this bandwagon. It was great! 10% of a whole country traveled somewhere just to see a part time dentist kick a ball and then we all clapped!

England vs Colombia penalty shootouts in 2018
I've found myself rooting against England so many times on this list so here's finally one where they win something.