40 years ago today, on February 22nd, 1980, the amateur US men’s ice hockey team defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union in Lake Placid, making it possible to clinch the Olympic gold medal against Finland days later. It was dubbed the “Miracle on Ice”, and moments like Herb Brooks’s iconic locker room speech, Mike Eruzione’s game winning goal, and Al Michaels’s “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” call have been further immortalized in the classic movie Miracle and other retrospectives.

Although I wasn’t born yet, as someone who loves hockey, US history, and seeing communists defeated, this is one of my favorite historical moments ever. But I think it can be difficult for non-hockey fans, or people who aren’t familiar with the state of America at the time, to fully appreciate the gravity of it.

The Miracle on Ice took place deep into the Cold War, which was heating up again even as the US was perceived to be in decline. The 1970s “détente” had permanently ended two months earlier with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and America was still processing issues like Vietnam, Watergate, and the energy crisis, while facing the ongoing Iran hostage crisis. I won’t try to put the feeling at the time, or the inspiration it provided to the American people, any better than my friend Jerry Thornton—a brilliant sports historian and humorist, who experienced it first hand—did in a 2017 interview:

Miracle has become like video pepper spray for me. Because I—you’re gonna think I ran with dinosaurs, but—I lived through it. I’m old enough to remember it, and they captured it so brilliantly… It did a brilliant job of capturing the mood of the country. It was dreary. And I was in high school, and you know, you just felt like we had lost our way in the world. Jimmy Carter gave his famous “malaise” speech, where he basically wagged his finger at the country and nagged us for being such Grumpy Gusses and basically said “you need to have a hot breakfast young man”, and it was really depressing. And then… It sounds ridiculous to say that a hockey game had this huge impact on the country. I swear to you it was true. And it’s the superlative, now, of everything—every sports category, I always go to that. Greatest moment: It was that. Biggest upset: It was that. If I could be one place in history that occurred during my lifetime, I would have been in that rink that day, and just been able to experience it. They did an amazing job, man. (And how Kurt Russel didn’t win the Oscar, it’s a travesty.)

The USSR had won the last several gold medals and were expected to win this one easily. Russia was second only to Canada among hockey countries, and no one else was close. The Olympics also didn’t allow professionals to participate, meaning that countries like Canada and the US couldn’t send their best players, who were in the NHL, but communist Russia could. And the Soviet government was obsessed with international competitions throughout the Cold War, even more so than Russia is today. Becoming an Olympic athlete was something you trained for 40+ hours a week as a full time job, from puberty or earlier onward.

So in addition to being the national team of one of the two best hockey countries, the USSR also had the advantage of training and practicing together as part of a pro-level organization, while the Americans had been attending lectures, studying for exams, and occasionally playing on their respective college teams. The Soviets were well on top of Olympic hockey by a significant margin, and America wasn’t second or third, either.

It can be especially difficult for non-sports fans to appreciate what an astronomical upset this was, especially if they hear about “miracle” games or plays on a somewhat regular basis. But given that there are thousands of regular season games and hundreds of playoff games per year just across the major North American sports, a “miracle” or two per year is rarer than it sounds from the outside, especially when you narrow it down to a team you’re cheering for in a sport that you love.

More importantly, the Miracle on Ice is on its own level altogether from other upsets and comebacks. Moments like the 2004 Red Sox four-game ALCS comeback against the Yankees, the 2016 Cavaliers three-game NBA Finals comeback against the Warriors, the undefeated 2007 Patriots losing to the 10-6 Giants in the Super Bowl, or the 2016 Patriots coming back from 28-3 to beat the Falcons in the Super Bowl were incredible, especially given the size of the stage. They were not close to as improbable. Anything can happen between professionals, and sports fans sometimes overestimate the skill gap between pro teams, and underestimate the chasm between professionals and everyone else. Unlike other big sports moments, the US hockey team winning the gold medal in 1980 truly was a miracle.

Imagine if a rag tag group of Canadian college students who had met weeks earlier were about to play the New England Patriots at their peak in a football game, or a group of Russian college students were going to play the Golden State Warriors at their peak in a basketball game—while still keeping in mind that this was the US facing Russia at the height of the Cold War. You wouldn’t think “Wow, that would be a huge upset.” You wouldn’t even consider the possibility of an upset. It wouldn’t occur to you to think about it. Highly trained and organized teams made up of the most talented players in a given sport simply don’t lose games to children.

Except once.

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