Memories That Needed No Notes

We drove to the Olympics in a colleague’s car, chugging out of New York City on the snowy Northway. We had to double back after we missed the small sign for Lake Placid; a few weeks later, no one would need a map to locate the sleepy resort town.

I had joined Newsday only a few months before and was excited about covering my first Olympics, but it seemed odd to drive there. I had watched previous games on TV and marveled at the exotic locales of Munich, Montreal and Innsbruck. Going to Lake Placid seemed as unceremonious as covering a high school football game. Yet, there we were, navigating the narrow road that was--and still is--the main link to town, losing signals on the car radio as we passed deep into the Adirondacks.

Our instructions were to settle into our house atop the hill behind the figure skating rink and explore our office, which was in the local high school. It was a classroom, complete with sinks and Bunsen burners for science and home economics students. News conferences would be held in the auditorium, with its narrow, brown seats arranged for assembly. We laughed. I remember thinking, “This is the Olympics?”

I was assigned to cover figure skating and hockey, with a decided emphasis on the former. Our sports editor, Dick Sandler, didn’t expect much from the U.S. hockey team, especially after its 10-3 loss to the powerful Soviet Union at Madison Square Garden a few weeks earlier. “You’ll cover the figure skating and the hockey, and when the hockey team is eliminated, we can just forget them,” he said.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

The U.S. Olympic hockey team became the story of the Games--the story of the century, if Sports Illustrated is to be believed. But we didn’t see it then.

Not until afterward was it clear how perfectly the dramatic elements were aligned: There was the taskmaster coach, Herb Brooks, and his friendly sidekick, assistant coach/general manager Craig Patrick; the ebullient team captain, Mike Eruzione, with his thick Boston accent; the small-town kid turned reluctant star, Mark Pavelich, who avoided news conferences and crowds bigger than two; the “evil” Soviets, who had dominated the Olympics since they began competing at the international level. Their occupations were listed as soldier or student, but everyone knew they played hockey year round and would overpower “our” boys, who had young legs and big dreams.

The suspense began when the U.S. tied Sweden with 27 seconds left in the opener and then routed a sound Czechoslovakian team. We knew interest was growing only because reporters and columnists began appearing at what had been lonely practices. The team’s success and the players’ unspoiled nature apparently had piqued the nation’s interest. People were tired of hearing about Afghanistan and hostages in Iran. They may not have known much about hockey, but this was our team, and they were going to get behind it and prove the U.S. could still be the best in the world at something, anything.

As the team continued to win, it transcended sports and became a national story. An international story, really.

And none of us there knew it.

Remember, this was before CNN brought the news to everyone, everywhere, all the time. Before ESPN was a national presence. Before cable TV and the Internet spread news instantaneously. ABC didn’t even show the game against the Soviets live.

Players got telegrams and letters wishing them luck, but they were largely oblivious to the fever erupting elsewhere. They were housed well out of town in dorms that were later used to hold prisoners, cut off from the outside world but for one TV station from Plattsburgh, N.Y.

“I don’t think we realized what was going on until we flew to Washington the next morning [after winning the gold medal],” defenseman Ken Morrow said. “The streets were filled with people holding signs and we had no idea of the sentiment that was out there. Part of it was Herb and part was it was being in a small community.

“It hit me after we beat the Russians. I listened on the radio in the trailer we were staying in. I had been getting a local AM station, and all of a sudden it was talking about us. Until that point, we had no inkling.”

My notes on the victory over the Soviets contain neat diagrams of goals and orderly notations of penalties disintegrating to wild scribbles at the end. Flags waving, I wrote. Sticks thrown in the air. Players pile on each other.

But I don’t need those notes to remember that exuberance, or the madness outside the Olympic Field House. The narrow streets were jammed with people dancing, singing and waving flags. People hugged strangers, laughing and crying. I will never forget a lone Soviet official outside the arena, recognizable by his heavy coat and fur hat. He watched with a bemused smile, part of the celebration but distinctly apart. I caught his eye, and he raised his index finger.

“One,” he said, smiling. “You are No. 1.”

The gold-medal triumph over Finland two days later was almost anticlimactic. And by then, the people who had never seen a hockey game claimed the team as their own and turned Lake Placid into a Cold War victory, when it was never that at all. It meant enough without outsiders finding political misinterpretations. The Lake Placid Games were the last small Olympics, the last, maybe, to feature a triumph of spirit instead of science or muscle.

Eruzione retired from hockey after the Games, suspecting nothing could be as sweet or wonderful. He was right.