Posted on 01/16/2018 9:13:51 AM PST by GoldenState_Rose
Russia's going crazy for the Olympics. The 1972 Olympics.
Even as the Russian team faces up to being barred from next month's Winter Games for doping offenses, audiences are flocking to see a movie about Soviet glory on the Olympic basketball court 46 years ago.
"Going Vertical" tells the story of the Soviet Union team which won gold in 1972, becoming the first basketball team in history ever to beat the United States at the Olympics.
It's a tale of Cold War rivalry, inspiring speeches and something very familiar to Russian sports fans after recent scandals — a gold medal decided by officials.
After pulling in crowds throughout the holiday season, last week "Going Vertical" became the highest-earning Russian movie ever in domestic cinemas with 1.84 billion rubles ($32.5 million) in takings, according to a government-backed statistics service.
At a screening in central Moscow on Thursday, audience members whooped and applauded as Alexander Belov sank the winning Soviet basket to beat the U.S. 51-50, and then cheered again when the original 1972 footage was played alongside the credits.
"I was crying tears of joy," cinemagoer Nina Parshikova said. To the millions of Russians who consider their country unfairly persecuted over doping allegations, even the Cold War can seem a simpler time. Audience member Yegor Druzhinin said: "Now politics plays more of a role. Then it was sport."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/majority-of-russians-regret-soviet-collapse-poll-says-60039
Now what’s wrong with this movie? Is it racist? Maybe Stalinist?
So.....were there ANY of those 1972 Russian hoopsters who were NOT juiced up?
This was their “Miracle on Hardwood” but it was facilitated by some of the worst basketball officiating of all time (only exceeded by Ted Valentine’s rape of IU at the NCAA semifinals in 1992).
It was so bad that the American team didn’t show up for the medal presentation, and to this day not one silver medal has been claimed by any member of the American team.
Who’s going to tell the Russians that the game was fixed. The secretary general of FIBA put three seconds back on the clock when he had zero authority to do so. What a legacy, celebrating a fixed game.
As I recall the American Coach ripped the official score book out of the hands of the head Ref and left the stadium, as such it’s not an official game.
The bias of the officiation was despicable as you mentioned.
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