Posted on 02/06/2004 10:14:12 AM PST by paltz
Greatest "Miracle"
February 4, 2004
Do you believe in miracles?
The 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey victory over the Soviet Union was a sports and political miracle.
Two decades later, it has inspired an entertainment miracle.
The miracle is that, in 2004, Hollywood actually released a great movie that is uplifting, pro-American, and devoid of sex and violence. That movie, "Miracle," debuts today [Friday, February 6, 2004] and is destined to be a hit. "Miracle" tells the story of coach Herb Brooks’ and his 1980 team’s incredible David-versus-Goliath victory.
In January 1981, when U.S. hostages were released from Iran, they viewed a highlight tape of major events they missed during their 444 days of captivity. Several freed hostages said the highlight of highlights was Brooks’ team’s semifinal victory over our Communist nemesis. The victory ultimately led to a Gold Medal for the U.S. (over Finland).
Amidst shouts of "USA, USA," announcer Al Michaels’ rhetorical question and answer, "Do you believe in Miracles? Yes!" is the most memorable sports broadcast quips. Young boys dressed as the U.S. Hockey Team for several Halloweens to follow.
The miracle was not just that Americans beat the Soviets. It was that amateur working-class American kids beat paid, seasoned Russian professionals. Despite all of the odds against them in a depressing time of Jimmy Carter malaise, hostages in Iran, double-digit inflation, a virtually "kick-me" sign on America around the world, and lines at the gas pump, the American spirit triumphed. The team of freedom triumphed over the team of tyranny. The unlikely victory was the first spark in what became America’s comeback -- the Reagan Revolution.
"Miracle" masterfully tells the story in the context of those events. While President Carter is decrying America’s bleak future, the U.S. Hockey team is out of earshot, playing touch football in the Minnesota snow with the patriotic spirit that portends of their victory.
But there may never be another "Miracle on Ice."
Yesterday’s Communist threat has largely been replaced by today’s radical Islam –arguably a much more potent enemy. There’s no Bin Laden-sponsored Taliban Hockey Team to beat. The Taliban was banned from the Games in 1999 because of their treatment of women. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad don’t field ice hockey teams for us to beat. Palestinians, who visited the Olympics as terrorists in 1972, now have an official Olympic delegation.
Al Michaels’ praise of America’s "miracle" amidst chants of "USA" has been replaced by left-wing sportswriters admonishing such patriotic displays. At the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, USA Today’s Christine Brennan dedicated a whole column to denouncing American flag-waving and shouts of "USA" and any other show of American pride. (Yet, on PBS, she praised Australians cheering their own at the 2000 Sydney Summer Games. "They’re charming.")
Another sportswriter denounced the Salt Lake Games as the most "nationalistic" since the Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Games. American patriotism now equals Nazism?
Salt Lake Organizing Committee President and now-Massachusetts Republican Governor Mitt Romney also admonished Americans. "Around the world it was like, ‘Boy, those Americans, always beating their chests,’" he told The Guardian. "This is not our time to talk about how great America is. It’s not designed to be a patriotic American display."
Funny, he didn’t say that, when hitting up Congress for America’s taxpayers to heavily subsidize the already heavily-sponsored Games featuring multi-millionaire professional athletes.
That’s another difference emphasized in Disney’s "Miracle" film.
Kurt Russell, playing coach Brooks, tells the audience that the Games and the athletes he coached were different, then.
Gone from today’s Olympics are the working-class, amateur U.S. Hockey Team players who made the 1980 victory over professional, Soviet-subsidized players twice as sweet. Brooks coached guys like Mike Eruzione, the team captain who scored the winning goal against the Soviets, but never played in the professional National Hockey League (NHL). Guys like goalie Jim Craig, whose laid-off father desperately needed him to forgo the Olympics for the money an NHL career would provide. They beat the Soviets when months earlier an NHL All-Star team could not.
Eruzione and his teammates reunited to light the Olympic Cauldron in Salt Lake in 2002. But it was empty symbolism.
In 2002, those amateurs--who had spunk, sparkle, and an underdog hunger to win for the U.S.—had long been replaced by "Dream Teams" of spoiled multi-millionaire, pro athletes. Instead, players were led by team captain and Detroit Red Wing Chris Chelios-- who threatened NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s life during the 1994-95 NHL lockout, and led the rest of the U.S. Hockey team in trashing dorm rooms and destroying furniture as team captain of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Thousands were spent haggling with these hockey "pros" regarding Olympic drug testing policy. Brett Hull whined about the trip to "far away" Salt Lake Games. On the dorm-trashing team with Chelios, Hull complained about the distance to Nagano, too.
"Miracle" shows the grueling conditioning Brooks put the team through. It’s doubtful today’s soft pros could withstand a lick of it.
The 1980 team was tough and gritty. They had no product endorsements or part-time jobs by Home Depot and Staples. They were no billions in tax subsidies. 1980 Olympians slept in converted prisons on prison cots, and organizers nearly declared bankruptcy on a $168 million budget. There were no $28 million opening ceremonies or $2 million temporary Olympic cauldrons and sculptures.
But there was heavy American pride.
For that, audiences at last week’s sneak preview of "Miracle" applauded and wept. That Hollywood finally depicts that in a positive way is a huge "miracle" in 2004.
[Debbie Schlussel used to represent coddled NHL players.]
I have always felt that the U.S. gold medal victory in the 1980 Winter Olympics was the greatest U.S. sports moment of my lifetime, but the description of this victory as a "miracle" is very misleading. There are a few reasons for this:
1. Although the U.S. team is often described as a bunch of "overmatched amateurs" playing against professional opponents, they actually matched up very well against them. In fact, Herb Brooks was hired to assemble and coach that team specifically because during his tenure as an NCAA hockey coach he embraced a wide-open style of play that was not typical of professional play here in North America but was very common in international hockey. There are a number of differences in the rules between the National Hockey League and NCAA hockey, and the NCAA rules are much closer to international rules than NHL rules are. This also explains why there were a number of outstanding players on that 1980 U.S. Olympic team, but none of them ended up having stellar careers in the NHL.
2. People who have been involved in hockey have long said that the Soviets lost that semifinal game (a lot of people don't remember that the U.S. didn't beat the USSR for the gold medal -- they had to go on and beat Finland for the gold) more than the U.S. won it. Legendary Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak, generally recognized as perhaps the best ever to play his position, was pulled from the game by coach Viktor Tikhonov after he gave up a bad goal to mark Johnson (I think) in the last few seconds of the first period. To this day, many of the Soviet players from that team cannot understand why Tikhonov had done this. They consider it highly unlikely that the U.S. would have scored four goals in a game against Tretiak.
Here's an interesting little tidbit . . . There is actually one player left in the National Hockey League today who could have played in those 1980 Olympic games, but was left off the Soviet roster because Tikhonov had a long-standing philosophy against having very young players on the Soviet national team. New Jersey Devils forward Igor Larionov, now 43 years old, was a 19 year-old hockey prodigy in 1980 -- he eventually went on to lead the Soviet team to gold medals in 1984 and 1988 as part of the legendary "KLM Line" (Vladimir Krutov on left wing, Larionov at center, and Sergei Makarov on right wing) that dominated international hockey for years.
A miracle is very fitting actually. The Soviet team was bigger, stronger, much more experienced, and played together for a long time. It is a mircale on the sporting scale that Herb could peiece together a bunch of kids in that amount of time and compete with seasoned professionals. Just because the superior Soviet team did a few things to lose the game, doesn't make it any less of a mircle either. That last second goal was a fluke, but that is sports.
I was a schoolboy at the time of the game, with a boy's interest in sports. The pre-Olympic materials I read were explicitly aimed at lowering expectations. Expect nothing more than third or fourth in their division, I remember reading.
I also saw how the team was getting the crap kicked out of it in the exhibition seasion, by NHL teams and by the Soviets.
I don't know if the game was even broadcast live. I think it was taped for broadcast sometime in the evening. So, all I heard about the game was a radio update in the afternoon. Of course, by the medal round, it was clear the American team was better than expected. Still, this was the Soviet Union they were playing. At the end of the 2nd period, USSR 3 USA 2. I remember feeling amazed the American team was so close, and couldn't help but feel some excitement at the prospect of a great upset. I heard the final announcement in the afternoon, and I couldn't believe it. It *was* amazing.
It was good hockey game, and there has never been a stadium atmosphere in any sport like there was that night in Lake Placid. Wow.
So, yeah, I want to see this film.
I am glad I was too dumb not to know it wasn't live. I watched it and had no idea what the results were. I think I watched every game they played in the olympics and it was amazing that the USA Team made it into the medal round. The best David vs. Galiath stories in sports.
Although the U.S. team is often described as a bunch of "overmatched amateurs" playing against professional opponents, they actually matched up very well against them.
What was the score of the exhibition game against the Soviets, though? Didn't the Americans lose by something like 11-1?
Even though the Americans had obviously gotten their act together by that medal game-- they did get into the medal round, after all-- their victory was a huge upset. You agree, I take it, but suggest that maybe it wasn't quite as great as it's thought to be? Maybe that's right. I'm sure there are *some* characterizations of that win that are over the top. Still, it was (at least) one of the great sports upsets of the century, I think.
The information about the Soviet team is interesting. I think I recall a piece on ESPN at the 20th anniversary talking about the game, with some of the same facts. The Soviet complaint about the pulling of their goalie rings familiar.
The loss had to be a bitter blow for the Soviet team. How they analyzed the loss in detail would be interesting to hear. Again, the remarks about the goalie make sense. I wonder what they thought about their scoring only three goals, though. They did have a huge number of shots on goal in that game, I recall. Was there some particular offensive failing they describe?
Perhaps the movie will discuss some of this.
Thanks for the information, AC
If anything, Herb Brooks went out of his way to put together a team of players that may have been smaller than their opponents but could skate as fast as anyone -- particularly at the center position (Neal Broten, Mark Johnson, and Mark Pavelich were all diminutive players by North American standards).
And the team wasn't exactly cobbled together at the last minute, either. Brooks spent months putting together what he described as "his kind of team" -- and part of his process included psychological testing to ensure that he had "his kind of players" on the team. One reason the triumph was described as a "miracle" was that the U.S. team was seeded seventh among the twelve teams, but going into the Olympics that year Brooks himself thought they were good enough to win the bronze medal.
1. No, I'm not a Canuck.
2. But I do know my hockey. I'll bet there aren't too many folks here on FreeRepublic who can say they were thrown out of a hockey rink by Herb Brooks. LOL!!
What was really lost in all the hoopla surrounding the U.S. hockey victory was a performance that may have been the greatest accomplishment in the history of the Olympic Games -- when Eric Heiden won gold medals in all five speed-skating events (a feat that was never accomplished before then, and will probably never be accomplished again).
Another interesting tidbit . . . I believe the 1980 Games were the last Winter Olympics in which the speed-skating events were held outdoors.
Ah yes...remember the power in those legs?..enough to make Dick Button swoon!
I was serving in Germany at the time, and morale was extremely low. The Iranian hostage situation was dragging on, GIs were reduced to receiving Care Packages from the Germans, because the pay and benefits were so poor. Back home, Jimmy Carter was telling everyone that we needed to lower our expectations, and perhaps the US didn't have to be number one at everything.
Then came Herb Brooks, Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig and the US Olympic Hockey Team. They show us and the World that the American spirit was not dead! I am eternally grateful to Coach Brooks and the Team. They are authentic American Heroes.
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