Posted on 02/22/2009 12:22:46 PM PST by The Big Feed
Hard to imagine it's been so long. 29 years ago today the United States of America amateur hockey team defeated a team of Russian professionals during the winter Olympics in what has to be the greatest upset in sports history. It lifted a nation. It was nothing short of surreal.
This video is a newly discovered original call of the game by Curt Chaplin who was covering the game as a sports reporter for the ABC Radio Network. Standing on a camera platform in the crowd, he did play-by-play of the entire game into his tape recorder, capturing the event on tape forever. Now, after 25 years, these tapes have been rediscovered and matched to the video.
Reading the write up on Youtube about how this video was put together, many thanks go out to Curt Chaplin, the man who was calling this game. It sounds as if he were there all by himself as ABC did not broadcast the game live on TV. It was tape-delayed. As I kid, I guess I didn't know this. Mr. Chaplin is an unsung hero in this story.
Here are some of the Youtube comments that shed more light on what it must have been like for those listening live on radio...
(Excerpt) Read more at thebigfeedblog.com ...
As great as the moment was it convinced the networks to tape-delay more events - ironically in the Internet age such a practice works against them as results are available online.
Thank God ABC was the Olympic network back then. Had Ebersol/NBC been in charge the last minute of the game would have been interrupted 6 times for commercial breaks and another interview with figure skaters.
That radio call is just awesome. Amazing how that can still bring tears to my eyes. I was a young kid when that game was played. it’s one of the best memories I have of my dad. We lived in the south and knew nothing about hockey. But I remember hanging on every shot and just going nuts when we won. It sounds funny to say, but that game was a defining moment in my life as an American. Between that game and Ronaldus Maximus, thereafter, I felt invincible.
The USA Olympic Hockey victory was the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
The days of amateurs in the Olympics are long gone and they have become a joke as a result. The low moment was the creation of the NBA Olympic Men’s Basketball Team.
I’ve been starting to think, what could top that, something that could get the whole country together.
We just might have that next year in the World Cup. In case you haven’t noticed, and most Americans haven’t, our National team is getting real good. We have arguably the best goalkeeper in Tim Howard, and some real good young talent.
And I guarantee, that even the biggest soccer detractors, would get on board should the US make it to the semi-finals or the finals in South Africa.
Some may not recall that the win over the USSR was not for the championship. We had to beat Finland, iirc, the next day to win the gold.
If NBC was in charge of that feed, it would probably those pansies Olbermann and that elitist midget Costas calling the game and will be a minute-by-minute drool-a-thon why Obama saved America.
The DVD Miracle with Kurt Russell and the story of that Olympic game is in my collection.
Do I believe in miracles? I believe unexplainable things/events occur once in a great while, whether they’re “miracles” is anybody’s guess.
Of course most Russians will say, they threw the game to the US because they felt it would help US-Soviet relations.
I was actually fighting the Cold War that day as I was on alert down in a Titan II site.
The alert crews were not told the real time results and when we saw the end of the game on TV in the Control Center the communications gear went nuts with alert facilities sending ring tones and a few messages, including SAC HQ over the Primary Alerting System.
I saw the Gold Medal game in my barracks room.
It sure was a slap in their face and made us Missileers feel pretty good.
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