Ice Hockey · 1980 · Lake Placid, USA
The Miracle on Ice
A team of American college amateurs beats the greatest ice hockey machine ever assembled, the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War.
USA 4-3 USSR
Final score
Olympic medal round
Round
~21
Team average age
The Soviet Union's national team had won five of the previous six Olympic golds and had recently beaten a team of NHL All-Stars. The US roster at Lake Placid was, by contrast, a group of college players assembled and drilled for months by coach Herb Brooks, average age barely twenty.
In the medal round on 22 February 1980, the United States trailed twice before Mark Johnson tied it just before the second intermission and Mike Eruzione scored the eventual winner with exactly ten minutes left. Commentator Al Michaels' call as the final seconds ran down, 'Do you believe in miracles? Yes!', became one of the most replayed lines in sports broadcasting.
The win itself was not the gold medal, the US still had to beat Finland two days later to claim it, but the Soviet game is the one that entered the culture. Arriving in the middle of the Cold War and shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it was read well beyond the rink as a moment where sport briefly stood in for something much larger.
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