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As I write this, the men’s U.S. Olympic hockey team is coming off a thrilling overtime victory against Sweden and preparing to play Slovakia in the semifinals. Should it win, the gold medal game against Canada will be played on the anniversary of the greatest sporting event of the 20th century and perhaps of all time: the Miracle on Ice.
I get it. Every generation is convinced its sports and culture sit at the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements. And men of a certain age will never stop talking about Team USA and Lake Placid, New York. But there’s a legitimate case to be made that the 4-3 U.S. victory over the Soviet Union was the most consequential sports event in American history.
Watching the victory over the Soviet team was a formative moment in my youth, not merely because the games were legitimately exhilarating and made me a lifelong hockey fan, but because, in my recollection at least, it sparked a spontaneous outpouring of patriotism all around me that wouldn’t be replicated until 9/11 — and then, only fleetingly and in the face of shocking tragedy. It certainly hasn’t happened in recent years. A similar national moment of comity seems almost impossible to imagine.
Of course, I’m probably indulging in a bit of revisionism when I contend that the win at Lake Placid was the demarcation line between the gloomy, litter-strewn, suede-and-denim 1970s and the flag-waving economic renewal of the 1980s. I know Mike Eruzione’s game-winner didn’t end inflation and Herb Brooks’s coaching didn’t bring down the Soviet Union, but it still feels like they did.
As a child of defectors from the Eastern Bloc, I saw the Soviet team as cogs in an evil system, a team of super athletes, something akin to a squad of Dragos from Rocky IV. The USSR, equipped with uncanny speed and determination, won all 12 games against the U.S. from 1960 to 1980, outscoring us 117-26.
“Our chances for a gold medal are very slim, if none at all,” Brooks admitted after being drubbed 12-3 by the Soviets in an exhibition at Madison Square Garden a few months before the Olympics. “If we can win a bronze this year, it’ll be like winning the gold medal in 1960.”
The Americans, on the other hand, looked and acted like children. Most were college players born in Massachusetts or Minnesota, brought together only six months earlier. And that’s the aspect of the game that imbued it with a historic quality. We — and I felt like I was one of them — were up against professionals in one of the few sports we’d never dominated.
Al Michaels, announcing the game because he was the only one on staff who understood the rules, famously asked after the win, “Do you believe in miracles?” But I’ve always thought the moniker belittled the team’s accomplishments somewhat. Team USA also beat top teams including Finland and Czechoslovakia, as well as Norway, Romania, and West Germany. Thirteen of the 20 players went on to play in the National Hockey League. The Americans were likely the best-conditioned team in the tournament. They won because they worked.
It’s true, however, that during the Cold War, communist nations would send squads of doped-up full-time athletes to demonstrate their alleged superiority to the West. The Olympics had always been politicized. From the 1932 Nazi Germany Games to the 2008 and 2022 Games in Beijing.
A countermovement to the cynicism of American life in the late 1970s was likely coming anyway. The Miracle on Ice finally gave Americans a reason to rally around a flag for the first time in years.
Until the late ’70s, Americans rarely thought of themselves as underdogs in anything. These days, you get a lot of misguided romanticism about the affordability and community of the 1970s. It wasn’t all bad, of course, but the decade featured rampant criminality, institutional failures, gas lines, economic decline, and a crippling national self-doubt. Then, like now, many believed American decline was inevitable.
In the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter went on television and delivered his “malaise” speech, attacking the “self-indulgence” and “consumption” of selfish Americans, demanding individual and collective sacrifices for the greater good. The problem was that he offered no grand purpose. Rather, he was steeling the country for failure. It was an un-American spectacle.
Even as the Games opened, Islamic terrorists were holding 53 American citizens hostage, and our government was seemingly helpless. Though perhaps the best metaphor for the feeble situation was the infamous attack on the president by a killer swamp rabbit while he was fishing on a Georgia pond. The kicker wasn’t that Carter had to grab an oar to fight off a bunny, but rather that, as he later explained to staff, he hadn’t even hit it. “I just splashed water toward him, and he finally veered his course,” the hapless Carter explained.
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Today? The players are still amazing. Defenseman Quinn Hughes, who scored the winner against Sweden, says he “loves” the United States and that it’s “the greatest country in the world.” The sentiment is a far cry from what we hear from some American athletes who rip the nation on foreign soil. It’ll be exciting to see Team USA take the gold. It won’t be the same, but it’s something. And we could use it.
There are increasingly large swaths of Americans who find unbridled patriotism distasteful, even offensive. In a free nation, there’s nothing abnormal about disagreement or vigorous debate. But partisan rancor has infected much of everyday American life in unhealthy ways, making the prospects of a national outpouring of patriotism seem unlikely. Perhaps sports can help transcend that pessimism again.
