'We touched the heart of a nation': My top 10 favorite Winter Olympics moments in history
I have been fortunate to cover the past nine Winter Olympic Games, every one since Calgary in 1988. But even before that, I followed the Winter Olympics religiously as a girl growing up in Toledo. I vaguely remember watching a little bit of the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, France, but haven’t missed one since, either on TV or in person.
Just for fun, here is a list of my favorite Winter Olympics moments, either those I watched on TV or from press row. I’ve certainly left off many inspiring names and performances, especially those from the more distant past, or from great international athletes. But I could pick only 10, and I decided to focus mostly on American athletes, so here goes:
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1. The Miracle on Ice: the U.S. men’s hockey team’s 4-3 victory over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics
This isn’t only my top pick of Winter Olympic moments, it’s the greatest upset in U.S. sports history, if not the greatest moment in all of American sports. In other words, nearly 42 years later, it remains an incredibly big deal.
For those who are too young to remember or who haven’t seen the movie or documentary or read about it, consider this: a U.S. team of amateurs, mostly college players no one had ever heard of, defeated the greatest professional team in the world at the time, the Soviet "Big Red Machine.”
The upset was explained this way: it was as if a high school football team had defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers, who were the Super Bowl champions at the time.
The upset occurred at the height of the Cold War, against the backdrop of a struggling American economy and psyche, with U.S. hostages being held in Iran and Soviet troops in Afghanistan, leading to President Jimmy Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
“Thank goodness there wasn’t a boycott of the Winter Games too,” U.S. team captain Mike Eruzione said in a December phone interview. “Imagine if the Soviets weren’t there, or we didn’t have the Games, then the story would never have happened.”
Eruzione wasn’t just the captain of the team, he also was the hero of the game, scoring the winning goal with exactly 10 minutes remaining. The puck caromed off the boards right to his stick for the shot heard round the world.
“As I’ve said for years, one inch to the left and I’d be painting bridges,” he said. “Instead, I’ve had the life of my dreams: speeches, golf tournaments, events. I spoke to a sales meeting the other day in Vegas. A guy came up to me and started to cry when he told me how much it meant to him. Nearly 42 years later and this man is crying in front of me.”
Eruzione, now 67, says he and his teammates knew they had done something extraordinary when they beat the Soviets, then won the gold medal two days later by beating Finland — but only when they left the Games did they realize the magnitude of it all.
“You went out into the country and realized, oh my goodness, this thing is incredible. We touched the heart of a nation. And it has never really stopped.”
2. Figure skater Peggy Fleming’s gold medal at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics
“Live and in color.” That’s the way ABC Sports heralded its coverage of the 1968 Games and the arrival of an American icon, elegant 19-year-old Peggy Fleming in her famous chartreuse dress. Fleming won the gold and soon became part of one of the most famous broadcasting teams in sports history with the legendary Dick Button. Where would the Olympic Games be without television, or figure skating — or Peggy Fleming for that matter?
3. Speedskater Eric Heiden’s five gold medals at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics
When Eruzione and his teammates weren’t playing or practicing, they stood up against a fence by the hockey venue, looking down at the Olympic oval where American Eric Heiden turned in one of the greatest performances in Olympic history.
Heiden became the only speedskater to win all five Olympic events in a single Games, from the 500 meters to the 10,000 meters, competing outdoors in the elements, beating skaters who specialized in those events each time. He single-handedly won more gold medals in Lake Placid than every nation except for the Soviet Union and East Germany (and the United States, of course, although he was responsible for five of the USA’s six gold medals.)
4. Figure skater Dorothy Hamill’s gold medal at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics
It has been said that winning the Olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating ensures a life of fame and fortune. That was certainly the case with Dorothy Hamill, whose talent, spins, personality and famous haircut are memorable to this day. Hamill became as iconic in American life as Fleming eight years earlier. I stayed home from a high school basketball game to watch her performance on TV with my family and friends. It’s safe to say that in the winter of 1976, every girl in America wanted to be Dorothy Hamill, and every boy in America wanted to date her.
5. The “Battles of Calgary,” first the Battle of the Brians, then the Battle of the Carmens at the 1988 Olympics
“How many times do you have two super-high profile events with such well-known names competing against each other at the same Olympics?” Brian Boitano said in a December interview. “Brian Orser is Canadian, I’m from the U.S. Then you had Katarina Witt from East Germany against Debi Thomas from the U.S., both skating to Carmen.”
Boitano beat Orser in one of the greatest competitions in Olympic figure skating history, then a week later, Witt won her second Olympic gold medal as Thomas made a couple of mistakes and settled for the bronze, the first Black athlete to win a medal at the Winter Olympics.
“Because we were in a North American time zone, everyone in the U.S. could watch it live,” Boitano said. “It seems like something made for a movie. It just had everything.”
6. Speedskaters Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen and their performances from the 1988, 1992 and 1994 Olympics in Calgary, Albertville and Lillehammer, respectively
Bonnie Blair is one of the most decorated athletes in U.S. Olympic history. She was as brilliantly steady as any Olympic athlete ever, winning a gold and bronze medal in 1988, two golds in 1992 and two more golds in 1994.
Jansen also competed in those three Olympic Games, and was every bit the favorite Blair was, but shockingly fell in both of his events in Calgary after learning that his sister had died of leukemia. In 1992, he failed to win a medal in his two events. Back to try once again in 1994, he finished out of the medals in the men’s 500 meters. One race remained, the 1,000 meters, the last Olympic race of his career — and Jansen won it.
7. The USA-Canada women’s hockey gold medal match at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics
Women’s ice hockey arrived at the Olympics in 1998, and either the United States or Canada has won every gold medal that has been awarded. After Canada won four in a row, sending the United States spiraling into a 20-year gold medal drought, the Americans defeated Canada, 3-2, in a game that grew more enticing by the minute as it moved from regulation to overtime to a shootout that needed even more shots to settle things — with a winning goal for the ages by Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, followed by a save by goalie Maddie Rooney to seal the victory.
8. The Tara Lipinski-Michelle Kwan battle at the 1998 Nagano Olympics
Two American teenagers under the intense glare of a worldwide spotlight, two perfect short programs, two perfect long programs. Even though the 15-year-old Lipinski was the reigning world champion, Kwan, 17, was seen as the favorite for the gold. Both young women skated exquisitely, Kwan with more caution, Lipinski with more abandon, and that was the difference as Lipinski won the gold and Kwan the silver.
With her seven triple-jump performance (the same as Lipinski), Kwan would have won every women’s Olympic skating competition in history to that point, except the one she was in that night in the mountains of Japan.
9. Austrian skier Franz Klammer’s gold medal in the downhill at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics
Television brought to life the thrills and chills of Klammer’s run down the mountain at breakneck speed in his home country. He nearly crashed multiple times, but he somehow made it to the bottom intact, winning the gold and forever placing his name into the annals of majestic, once-in-a-lifetime Olympic performances.
"Sports Illustrated" added the punctuation mark when it arrived at our house a few days later: “Franz Klammer’s Sensational Downhill,” read the headline on the cover, with a photo of the skier in a yellow suit, flying through the air.
10. The Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan saga at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics
The polar opposite of inspiring, this scandal to end all scandals is the craziest sports news story of all time, so it definitely deserves a place on my list. I covered every minute of it, from the attack on Kerrigan’s knee by Harding’s live-in ex-husband and his pals on Jan. 6, 1994 at the Olympic trials in Detroit to the two nights they skated in late February in Norway.
How huge was this story? The women’s short program in which they both competed is to this day the sixth-highest rated program in U.S. television history. You read that right. Not sports — all TV shows. The only shows with better ratings are the last episode of M*A*S*H, Dallas’ “Who shot J.R.?”, an episode of Roots and two Super Bowls.
The only good news was that Kerrigan recovered from her bruised knee to skate the performance of her life, winning a silver medal to go along with the bronze she won at the 1992 Games.