Anatomy of a Miracle

It's really cool that this weekend they had a Miracle on Ice reunion in Lake Placid on the 35th anniversary of the game.  People say they remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, when man landed on the Moon, when the Challenger exploded, on 9/11 and when the Miracle on Ice happened.  Well, I wasn't alive for three of those events, was three when the Challenger exploded and was in class on 9/11.  But, the fact that I'm younger than the Miracle on Ice doesn't mean I don't get its significance or get choked up at the mere mention of the game, which I've watched on ESPN Classic several times.  I cry at the end of Miracle and chant "U-S-A! U-S-A!" every time I see it.

I can't believe it took this long for a full-scale Miracle on Ice reunion.  The whole team lit the cauldron at the Opening Ceremony of the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, but Mark Pavelich was missing.  And they've gotten 19 of the 20 together at various other times, including the funeral of Herb Brooks, but never all 20.  This is as close as they've ever gotten.  All 19 living members were there, including Pavelich.  The only exception was Bob Suter, who died in September.  Suter was there, too.  In spirit.  His jersey was raised to the rafters as the final part of the ceremony.

Lake Placid was the perfect place for the reunion.  Because not only was it the site of their triumph, it also serves as a reminder that the Miracle on Ice can never happen again.  And the most ironic part of that is fact that the Miracle on Ice is exactly why the Miracle on Ice can never happen again.  It was truly a special moment in sports history, nestled into its tiny hamlet in Upstate New York.  That's where the memories belong.  Which is why Lake Placid was really the only place you could hold such a reunion.

The Olympics have changed a lot in 35 years.  That's why the Miracle on Ice will live on in history as something that can never be repeated.  The biggest change is the existence of social media.  Back in 1980, ABC was able to air the 5:00 game in prime time on tape delay with nobody finding out the results ahead of time.  NBC was criticized for its tape-delayed primetime coverage in London and Sochi, when showing stuff live in primetime was impossible!  But 35 years ago, that's just the way things were.  They didn't have Facebook and Twitter and bloggers and 24-hour news channels there to spoil the surprise ahead of time.

Then there's the venue.  Lake Placid is a small village of 2500 people that has a total area of 1.5 square miles.  It's in the middle of nowhere.  A tiny town in the Adirondack Mountains that's only about an hour from the Canadian border.  The hockey arena seats only 7,700 people and the speed skating oval of Eric Heiden's exploits was in the parking lot of the high school.  The Olympic Village is now a prison.

Yet this is a place that has hosted the Winter Olympics twice.  As the Olympics have gotten bigger and bigger, they've outgrown places like Lake Placid.  In a way that's sad.  Because these quaint little villages give the Olympics a unique kind of charm that larger cities can't.  Yet it's only the larger cities that can afford the Winter Olympics now.  It's no coincidence that the three largest cities ever to host the Winter Olympics were three of the last four hosts--Vancouver (2010), Torino (2006) and Salt Lake City (2002).  All of Lake Placid's Olympic memories are in the past.

And, of course, there were some serious political overtones in Lake Placid.  It was the midst of the Cold War.  The Soviet Union had troops in Afghanistan, the U.S. was threatening to (and eventually did) boycott the Moscow Summer Games, and tensions between the two countries were at an all-time high.  Well, the Cold War is over and politics, for the most part, have been kept out of the Olympics since it ended.  It's about the competition.  Like it should be.

Finally, there are the players themselves.  In 1980, the U.S. Olympic hockey team consisted of 20 college kids.  Amateurs you've never heard of that became household names because of what they did in the Olympics.  Nowadays, the Olympic hockey tournament is a star-studded affair featuring multi-million-dollar professionals.  I'm not complaining about that.  It's the best players in the world competing against each other for their native countries.  But it's also a level playing field.  You don't have the American amateurs taking on the very best of Russia's state-run sports system.  It's not David vs. Goliath anymore.

None of this is an indictment of what the Olympics has become.  I'm too young to remember the Olympics being anything different than what they are now.  But I kind of wish my "memories" of the Miracle on Ice were from having actually experienced it.  I'll never know how special that moment 35 years ago actually was.  It's impossible for me to.  All I have is what that moment means to me.  And that's still a lot.

"Do you believe in miracles?"  You're damn right I do, Al.