30 Years Since the Miracle on Ice

While some people are calling last night's USA win over Canada as a modern day version of the "Miracle on Ice", it's not really a good comparison. In 1980 Olympic rules banned professional athletes from Olympic teams, so the group we had in Lake Placid consisted of a bunch of college players who had limited experience playing with each other and certainly weren't the pros that played yesterday in the USA v. Canada game. That game might as well have been an NHL All Star Game.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great game but it wasn't 1980.

In 1980 the Soviets, on the other hand, fielded their Red Army Team which played together all the time as was as close as you could get to professional athletes. They were considered the best team in the world. The West routinely found themselves putting amateurs up against Eastern Bloc pros in various team sports. While I'm not sure allowing pro athletes into the Games was a good idea, it did serve to level the playing field for the West.

I remember February 22, 1980 very well. It was a Friday and after finishing a week of work in San Diego I was headed to my folks house in Huntington Beach for the weekend. The US team had already played better than anyone had hoped in the early rounds of the tournament. They had tied powerful Sweden, easily defeated the Czechs who were thought to be the second best team, and finished group play with three more wins. It was now time to face the awesome Soviets in the medal round.

I didn't get to watch the game, or even listen to it on the radio as I headed north up the I-5. I remember I was somewhere in the neighborhood of the San Onofre Nuclear Plant when I heard a breaking news bulletin on the radio that the US had defeated the Soviets. It was one of those moments that you'll always remember where you were when you heard the news.

That game also featured a memorable call from a young play-by-play broadcaster named Al Michaels who probably never imagined that his assignment at the hockey venue would make him famous:

Eleven seconds, you've got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? YES!

And thus, "Miracle on Ice" was born. For the first time in its history Sports Illustrated ran a cover without any caption or headline as shown above. Nobody had to be told what had happened.

The US went on to win the gold in the final game against Finland. That one I watched live on Sunday afternoon and I still remember the thrill of watching our team on the medal podium celebrating their unlikely win.

Unfortunately, shortly after the 1980 Winter Games Jimmy Carter decided to screw up the Olympics for a couple of cycles by withdrawing our team from the 1980 Moscow Summer Games, which resulted in the Soviets pulling out of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. Nothing of substance was accomplished by either boycott. Sort of like Carter's entire presidency.

In 1980 America desperately needed some good news. We had hostages being held in Iran, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, interest rates were going through the roof, and nothing seemed to be going our way. Coming out of the fiasco of Vietnam and Watergate, America's self confidence was at an all time low. This one hockey game didn't fix all of that, but it did give America a much needed shot of confidence that helped lead us out of the mess that Carter and Nixon had left us. It was indeed a "Miracle on Ice".