February 22, 2003
IN OUR YOUTH, OUR HEARTS WERE TOUCHED WITH FIRE:
U.S. Defeats Soviet Squad In Olympic Hockey by 4-3 (Gerald Eskenazi, 2/22/03, The New York TimesIn one of the most startling and dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog United States hockey team, composed in great part of collegians, defeated the defending champion Soviet squad by 4-3 tonight. [...]The American goal that broke a 3-3 tie tonight was scored midway through the final period by a player who typifies the makeup of the United States team.
His name is Mike Eruzione, he is from Winthrop, Mass., he is the American team's captain and he was plucked from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League. His opponents tonight included world-renounced stars, some of them performing in the Olympics for the third time.
The Soviet team has captured the previous four Olympic hockey tournaments, going back to 1964, and five of the last six. The only club to defeat them since 1956 was the United States team of 1960, which won the gold medal at Squaw Valley, Calif.
Few victories in American Olympic play have provoked reaction comparable to tonight's decision at the red-seated, smallish Olympic Field House. At the final buzzer, after the fans had chanted seconds away, fathers and mothers and friends of the United Sates players dashed onto the ice, hugging anyone they could find in red, white and blue uniforms.
Meanwhile, in the stands, most of the 10,000 fans - including about 1,500 standees, who paid $24.40 apiece for a ticket - shouted "U.S.A.," over and over, and hundreds outside waved American flags.[...]
No hockey game is played nonstop for 60 minutes, but this one came close. The Russians have been famed for their conditioning techniques. They also were considered the finest hockey team in the world.
Unless you lived through the godforsaken '70s, as described below, you'll not be able to comprehend how huge this moment was. If our parents remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, we remember where we were when the US beat the Russkies.
It's not too much to say that it was here the worm began to turn and America began to believe in itself again and in the possibility of eventual triumph over the Soviet Union. As the 1972 theft of the Olympic gold in Men's Basketball became a metaphor for American ineffectiveness in the face of Soviet ruthlessness, so did the 1980 hockey win seem a metaphor for an America rising from the ashes of Vietnam, Watergate, energy crisis, and Iran hostage-taking. It may be merely a coincidence, but if so a providential one, that five days later Ronald Reagan, with his mantra of waging and winning the Cold War, scored a crushing upset victory over George H. W. Bush in the NH primary. And the American people never looked back...
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 22, 2003 7:54 AMMr. Judd--
Add into the mix Carter's "brave" stand to boycott the Olympics. To me that summed up the ineffectual malaise of his governing style. It's amazing that he a.) thought that boycotting the Olympics would be an effective response to the Afghanistan invasion (unless he cynically thought that it gave the appearance of doing something when he was doing nothing) and b) that he'd do something like this during a presidential campaign. No wonder Reagan trounced him.
Oh, I was folding laundry. I was yelling at ABC because it seemed every time it broke to commercial, we scored another one during that break.
It was Marvelous!
I was four, and I'll still never forget it. I start tearing up whenever I watch a replay.
I didn't live (much) through the Seventies, and I always thought the feeling-good-because-you're-American stuff of the early 80s was the norm until I actually started studying the decade I was born in. Thank God for Reagan.
And yes, I do believe in miracles.