Miracle on Ice Meets Cancel Culture – By Lloyd Billingsley (Front Page Mag) / Feb 28 2020
Only a “lucky win” by “white” Americans, says Trump-hating columnist.
On February 22, the 40th anniversary of their landmark victory over the Soviet Union, members of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team appeared at a Trump rally in Las Vegas sporting red “Make America Great Again” hats. As USA Today noted, “that didn’t sit well with Trump opponents, who criticized a team that once unified a nation.” One of the critics was Marcos Bretón of the Sacramento Bee.
After the “momentous” American victory on February 22, 1980, Bretón writes, “My inspiration was the ‘Miracle on Ice’ team.” Forty years later, “when I saw the image of the team as old white men wearing red hats next to Trump, the spell was finally broken.” Like all human beings, hockey players have no control over their age and skin shade, but Marcos holds it against them.
“The ‘Miracle on Ice’ guys were perfect for adulation because they were all white, fresh faced and eager to embrace the flag without question,” writes Bretón, who also has a beef with the victory. If the teams had played again, he writes, the Soviets would have “wiped the ice” with the Americans. So the momentous victory was something of a fluke. On Monday night, ESPN provided a different perspective.
As the “Of Miracles and Men” documentary showed, the Soviet squad did nothing but play hockey and train. They were a mature, professional team, best in the world on the international scene, with world-class players such as Valeri Kharlamov and Slava Fetisov. The Americans, on the other hand, were all collegians with an average age of 21, youngest team in the tournament.
Nobody expected the American team to win a medal, and in the run-up to the games, as the New York Daily News headlined it, “Russian hockey team annihilates Team USA 10-3 in Madison Square Garden in Madison Square Garden exhibition before start of 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid.” At the time, that seemed to sum up the fortunes of the entire nation.
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