Spectators and dignitaries fill the Lake Placid Horse Show grounds Saturday for the Opening Ceremonies of the 25th Anniversary of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
Posted on 02/13/2005 11:06:25 AM PST by ConservativeStatement
Will never forget the events of that time up to the detail of being a hockey fan in my teens and calling Sports Phone in NY because I could not bear to wait until that night to watch the game and get the final results.
I have the game on film as well as several documentaries about it and I'll tell you this- each and every time I watch it the excitement of the final ten minutes of that game, from the point Eruzione scored and the Americans took the lead, is the same today for me today as it was 25 years ago.
In 1997 I was in that tiny little arena and the hair on the back of my neck literally stood up realizing what had taken place there!
I wish was old enough to have appreciated the Miracle.
What I can't understand is why they didn't have the USA-USSR game at 8:00 and the Sweden-Finland game at 5:00?
Anyone who doubts the idea of Einstein's Theory of Relativity should watch that game if they haven't already seen it. Watching the clock tick down on that game was the longest 10 minutes of my life! And what a beautiful memory.
Seems strange that the Soviets didn't want to change times. I'm sure they were convinced they were going to do the same thing to the Americans they did a couple of weeks earlier at Madison Square Garden. Why wouldn't they want to do it live in front of a large American audience during prime time?
I'ma lready lookign forward to the next Winter Olympics. Oh, and the World Cup is in 2006 too. :-)
Good grief. This is a day I should use spellcheck....
When teams dominate so often they forget what it's like to play in a tight game. It's also never good to be behind in the third period when the other team's goalie (Jim Craig) is hot.
I guess the players will show up for that. It's not like they're doing much else right now.
Yeah. It's a shame there is not some kind of big-time professional hockey league where the best players in the World could show-case their talents. That would really be something...
The schedule for the Olympics is always set way in advance...the seedings for the hocky finals were already set. The Americans, rather ABC, tried to move the game till the evening for prime time but the Ruskies said "nyet!"
One of the most intriguing points they made was that Herb Brooks never considered that victory the kind of monumental, improbable upset that it has been portrayed to be. He put together a team that year with the sole purpose of matching up well against the Soviets, specifically to provide strangths that matched up well against Russia's few weaknesses. Going into the Olympics, he said his team was good enough to win at least a bronze medal -- an odd comment when you consider the U.S. was seeded something like #7 out of the 12 teams.
Bump for later
I highly recommend that movie to anyone and everyone. It is a superb portrayal of the events both in a hockey and politcal sense.
Hopefully when the NHL comes back it will be a format where that can happen.
I was old enough; and I couldn't've cared less about the hockey. Was too busy trying to find biathlon coverage, like every other winter olympics.
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