2007: 31.59%, 2008: 3.41%, 2009: 27.63%, 2010: 27.74% [1]
Owning too much gold is terrible, but a modest allocation to gold in a portfolio of mostly stocks, which you rebalance every year or two, works out pretty well. [2]
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-...
[2] https://portfoliocharts.com/2021/12/16/three-secret-ingredie...
(NB. Gold enthusiasts will sometimes try to cloud the waters by comparing gold to, say, S&P500 price only (ie pretending dividends aren’t a thing). This honestly still doesn’t leave gold looking very attractive, but it’s also dishonest. To compare like with like you want to look at S&P500 with dividends reinvested, and at that point gold just isn’t even in the running.)
But you can get the gist by observing that in 2008, the S&P500 dropped 38.49%,[1] while gold went up 3%. If you had, say, 10% of your portfolio in gold, then when you did your end-of-year rebalance you got to buy a lot of cheap stock. Gold also substantially outperformed stocks in 2007, 2009, and 2010. So I'm not convinced it's a "myth that people flee to gold in times of uncertainty." Maybe you're right that it's not as big an effect as some people believe, but it's enough to benefit your portfolio.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-re...