In 1980, with U.S. embassy employees 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.
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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 by 17 of the 20 other members of the team that won gold in Lake Placid, N.Y., as they lit the cauldron at Rice-Eccles 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 the wilds of northern Minnesota.
“We were part of something we had no idea people were watching,” Eruzione said. “A few years ago, it was named the greatest sports event of the (20th) century, so I guess people were watching.
“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-themed warmup suits used by the other torch-bearers in the nationwide relay.
That sartorial message of nationalism fit into a post-Sept. 11 atmosphere of flag-waving some worry may become excessive during these Olympics.
The most emotionally-charged moment of Friday’s Opening Ceremony was the appearance Friday of the tattered American flag, which had been found in the rubble of the World Trade Center buildings.
Carried into the stadium by eight U.S. Olympians and escorted by five New York policemen and four fire department members, the flag was greeted with three minutes of solemn silence, broken only by the announcement of the playing of the national anthem.
“This evening resonated because of what happened on 9-11,” said director Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg was part of a counterbalance, the eight people of global significance who carried the Olympic flag. Among that group was Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the Nobel Prize for fighting the legal segregation system in his country.
“People asked me if these Games will be an outlet for chauvinism or jingoism,” Tutu said.
“I said, `Well, why not?’ If it is what might help heal America, OK. Then they will discover just as you can’t fight terrorism on your own, you can’t have an Olympic Games on your own.”
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.
That audience saw an entertainment package that seemed at times like an old Sonja Henie skating movie being interpreted by Cirque du Soleil. Much of the stadium floor was turned into an ice rink on which 780 skaters performed, including 1992 Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi of the United States.
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.”
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Most of the United States’ greatest Winter Olympians took part in the final stages of the torch relay. The exception was speedskater Eric Heiden, winner of a record five gold medals at the 1980 Olympics, who told Salt Lake officials he wanted no role but that of lighting the cauldron.
Figure skaters Dick Button, Dorothy Hamill, Scott Hamilton and Peggy Fleming were among the last torch-bearers. So were 1984 champion skiers Phil Mahre and Bill Johnson, the latter still suffering from memory loss after he crashed last year in a quixotic effort to make the 2002 Olympic team.
They passed the torch to speedskaters Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen, who skated it to Jim Shea, a 1964 Olympian in cross-country skiing and Nordic combined, and his son, Jim Jr., who is competing here in the new skeleton sledding event.
The third generation of their family, 1932 gold medalist Jack Shea, was expected to be part of the festivities until he was killed at age 91 in a Jan. 22 automobile accident.
As his grandfather had done in Lake Placid, N.Y., 70 years ago, Jim Shea Jr. cited the athletes’ fair play oath on behalf of all the other competitors. Full circle, indeed.