In 1980, with Americans still being held hostage by a revolutionary government in Iran, a bunch of college kids playing a sport much of the nation knew little about became American heroes.
Twenty-two years later, when the notion of what an American hero is has been redefined by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the achievement of the hockey players who wrought the “Miracle on Ice” still resonates in this country.
That was evident by the choice of the 1980 Olympic champion U.S. hockey team to play the final role in an Olympic flame ceremony that circled the country and included more than 11,000 torch-bearers.
Team captain Mike Eruzione was joined Friday night by 17 of the 20 members of the team that won gold in Lake Placid, N.Y., as they lit the cauldron at Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The cauldron will burn until Feb. 24, when the men’s hockey gold-medal game will wrap up the Games.
Missing were Mike Ramsey, who had a game commitment as assistant coach of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, and Mark Pavelich, who lives a reclusive life in northern Minnesota.
“We were part of something [in 1980] we had no idea people were watching,” Eruzione said. “A few years ago it was named the greatest sports event of the century, so I guess people were watching.
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“Our team typifies everything we ask of people in this country–clean, hard-working guys who cherish what it means to be an Olympian.”
They also typified the power of sport to encapsulate the emotions of a moment. In the case of the 1980 Olympics, the moment has similarities to the global events currently affecting the United States.
In the 1980 Olympics, the last Winter Games in the United States until now, Team USA upset the seemingly invincible Soviet hockey team when the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was about to prompt a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. Now the actions of a terrorist group operating out of Afghanistan have catalyzed a patriotic spirit that has not been seen since 1980.
“It has kind of come full circle,” Eruzione said.
“We have no control about what happens politically around the world, but some Olympic Games take a little more political connotation than others; 1980 was like that, and this one was like that.”
Eruzione and his teammates wore replicas of their 1980 uniform sweaters, with “USA” prominently on the chest, instead of the winter-theme warmup suits used by other torch-bearers in the nationwide relay.
Eruzione was consumed by far less lofty thoughts after he received the torch from Picabo Street, the 1998 skiing gold medalist, and Cammi Granato of Downers Grove, captain of both the 1998 Olympic champion women’s hockey team and the team that will try to defend that title here. They ran it up the steps of the south end zone as a crowd of 55,000 cheered.
“Mark Johnson told me: `There are 4 billion people watching. Don’t drop it,'” Eruzione said.
Johnson, another member of the 1980 team, was referring to an estimate of the global audience for the telecast of the Opening Ceremony.
The ceremony illustrated the Salt Lake Olympic theme: “Light the fire within.” That theme affected Mitt Romney’s decision to ask the 1980 hockey team to light the cauldron, a reflection of fire and ice through which the flame rose visibly after it was ignited.
“That hockey team inspired the nation,” said Romney, CEO of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee. “They seemed to typify our message as much as any Winter Olympians I can imagine.”