A few years ago I shared an office with a coworker 8 years my junior. We joked about everything that became a generation gap between us...like my thinking of U2 as an alternative band while she thought they were classic rock.
Our biggest gap was revealed when another coworker of ours came in one day to tell us about the vacation she was planning to Lake Placid. I said "Whoa, cool!" while Junior said "Wasn't that a horror movie?"
I stared at her in disbelief. "The 1980 winter Olympics?" I asked. "Remember them?"
"I was three," she pointed out.
"But surely you have heard of them?" She shrugged. She knew nothing of Eric Heiden's five gold medals nor even the Miracle on Ice.
So I told her. I spent an afternoon explaining the Cold War and the hostages in Iran and the fact that the Soviet hockey team were really professionals whereas the U.S. team was college kids. (She didn't realize that Olympic teams weren't always pro-filled "dream teams." If I'm recalling my political history correctly, allowing pro atheletes into the Olympics was a move to level the playing field against the Soviet and Soviet bloc sports machines, just as those machines were breaking down.)
For me, personally, there was an aspect to the hockey gold not part of the greater social and political context. By 1980 I'd been a hockey fan in the DC suburbs for six years. If you think Washington is not a hockey town now, you should have seen it in the '70's. Wearing our Capitals shirts and trying to organize street hockey games in the neighborhood, my sister and I were the freaks of our elementry school.
(We also had a Capitals connection on the 1980 team...Craig Patrick, the assistant coach and GM, had played here. I'd even met him at a street hockey clinic the team gave for kids in 1977.)
After USA beat the Soviets, everybody was interested in hockey. I can remember going to the local mall on Saturday (the day after the win over the Soviet Union, the day before the gold medal game versus Finland) and seeing people clustered around a tv in an appliance store watching replays and cheering again. I remember seeing people actually wearing hockey jerseys.
The players who went from the Olympics to the NHL were a big draw. I remember hearing commercials "Come see Jim Craig!" and the Caps had their own Olympian, Dave Christian. (One of my favorite players over the years, in fact.)
The post-gold surge in hockey interest did die down...in 1982 the Capitals came close to folding, and I do wonder what the NHL will look like after next year's (years'?) lockout.
But when I got a voicemail message from Junior a few weeks ago saying "Nic, I just saw a preview for a movie about a seminal event in your life" I knew exactly what she was talking about, although I'd not realized Miracle was in the making.
I'll be heading out in a little while to see it. I've heard mixed reviews and I don't much care...of course it is a feel-good, triumph of the underdog, rah-America movie...it was a feel-good, triumph of the underdog, rah-America event. I just hope it's good hockey.
Posted by Nic at February 6, 2004 11:04 AM | TrackBack