(Photo provided) The front page of The Marietta Times from Feb. 23, 1980.

The Way I See It

Art Smith

One of the biggest battles of the cold war with the Soviet Union occurred not on the battlefield but on the ice of a smallish hockey rink in the quiet village of Lake Placid, New York.

Forty-six years ago, a group of young men, the youngest ever sent to the Olympics by the United States, took to the ice in the packed Olympic Field House, the home-country crowd of 5,000 cheering them on.

The Americans had faced the same seasoned group of Soviets two weeks before at Madison Square Gardens.

The article on the front page of The Marietta Times on Feb. 23,1980, summed up the two games.

“The first game looked like men and boys were playing, the second one looked like old men and young boys were playing.” The Russians won the first game 10-3, they lost the Olympic game 4-3 and the country erupted.

“The Russians looked tired,” said player Mark Wells.

“Maybe they’ve won too much, suggested Rob McClanahan. This is just one game. If we played ’em a series, you never know. I’m not saying we dominated play, we scored four and they scored three.

The team was being modest.

The Soviets had won the gold medal in the last four Olympics and had not lost a game in the Olympics since 1968.

Coverage of the game consumed two-thirds of the front page of The Marietta Times and captivated the nation, an unusual amount of space to be devoted to a sports story.

It was really more than a sports story though.

It was a cold war story about the young boys (the average age of the American players was 21) beating the stronger and experienced men of the Soviet Union.

Ironically the game was not broadcast live.

In a day before the internet, ABC kept the results quiet until it aired in prime time.

Al Michaels got the job as play-by-play announcer for the game because he was the only member of the ABC broadcast team that had called hockey before.

He delivered the famous line “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” as the clock clicked down to zero at the end of the game. It was not over yet.

To capture the gold medal the team had to also defeat Finland, which they did 4-2.

The story of the game was made into the made-for-TV movie “Miracle on Ice” the following year. In 2004, Disney released the film “Miracle.”

Of the 20 players who were on team USA, 13 went on to have careers in the National Hockey League.

The team had the honor of lighting the Olympic flame at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The game was later voted as the greatest sports moment of the century by Sports Illustrated.

Art Smith is online manager for The Marietta Times and The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com