Miracle On Ice

It's hard to believe that we're coming up on the 40th anniversary of Team USA's 1980 Olympic Hockey gold medal. I honestly don't think that the young folks today can appreciate what a huge moment that was in both US history and the world of sports.

For those of you not old enough to remember, it was a bleak time for the US. We were in the midst of the Cold War and the USSR was flexing its political and military muscles. Iran had stormed the US Embassy taken 52 Americans hostage. While Jimmy Carter was likeable as a person, he seemed ineffective as President. We had gasoline rationing and long lines to fill up your tank.

But then came the 1980 winter Olympics. Back in those days the Olympics was an amateur competition and the US hockey team was comprised of a bunch of college hockey players that no one had ever heard of. Meanwhile, the Soviet "amateur" team was composed of grown men from their Red Army team and what most considered to be professional athletes. The Soviet team routinely crushed every opponent, including crushing the Americans 10-3 in a pre-Olympic event.

Some how, some way this upstart group of young men dethroned the might Soviet team in the medal round on their way to Olympic gold. I was a young high school hockey goalie back then, first born in the US in my family. My great grandparents had escaped Stalin and the Russian Revolution with my grandmother in tow and escaped to Canada where my father was born. My connections to hockey, Russia, and the US all collided during that Olympic season.

Beating the Soviets placed team USA in the gold medal game versus Finland on a Sunday morning. And Sunday mornings in my family meant church, no matter how deep our ties to hockey (my father had player Jr. A's for the Niagara Falls Flyers). But as luck would have it, our Reverend was a hockey fan and was fed updates every 5 or 10 minutes that he relayed to the congregation. I did manage to get home in time to see the end of the game.

Beating the Soviets and winning the gold medal was more than just winning a game. It instilled pride back in Americans and bloodied the noses of the Soviets at a crucial time in world history. I believe it also paved the way for Ronald Reagan to capitalize on that spirit and rejuvenate American pride.

For me personally, it meant a lot. Suddenly hockey was a big sport at my high school. My teammates and I rode that wave and went 48-3-2 in that my junior year and into my senior year. It got a teammate of mine and myself noticed by college teams and enabled us to supplement the cost of our education. I even got invited to a regional tryout for the 1984 Olympic team - and was cut within the first 10 minutes. Good times.

The movie "Miracle" does a decent job of telling the story, but it really doesn't do justice to how those games changed our nation and changed the world. I've embedded the game versus USSR here but you should also go yo YouTube and watch the Gold Medal game versus Finland.

Side note: At 16 years old I spent the summer of 1981 in what was then West Germany working for a division of my father's company. Tensions were high with US military bases in Germany and Ronald Reagan staring down the Soviets. I remember seeing US F4 Phantoms flying overhead and even saw US tanks on maneuvers outside of the Black Forest region. It then dawned on me I was on foreign soil seeing US military. While I was there I proudly wore a t-shirt that said USA World Hockey Champions - and twice German locals cursed me and spit on me while I was wearing that shirt. They were afraid WW3 was about to start in their back yard.