Of Miracles and Men

Every so often a film or book finds you that changes your perspective and teaches you valuable lessons or new insights.

Last week I was struck by the ESPN 30 for 30 Film called “Of Miracles and Men”.

It is a documentary by Jonathan Hock based on The Miracle on Ice, Team USA’s win over the Soviets at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.

Even at the age of 11 I was aware the home team was an enormous underdog. But we were also aware of the enormous geopolitical themes. In 1980 the Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan sparking one of the hotter periods of the Cold War. In our minds the Soviet regime posed a daily danger to our American way of life and the freedom of our allies around the world.

“Of Miracles and Men” presents the story from the Soviet side, giving the viewer a new vantage point. The story isn’t about the triumph of good over evil. It is the story of the men on the big bad bullying Soviet team.

But this film shows them as real people, just men who played a sport representing their home country, one they’d been raised to love and honor. These men wanted nothing but to win a gold medal for their team, their country and themselves. They were and remain proud men, spectacular athletes who relished the competition but felt the pains of a chilling defeat.

In the documentary, Soviet Forward Boris Mikhailov is asked if he’d ever seen the theatrical movie “Miracle” about that game. His answer was indicative of the pride he felt in the many triumphs of his life over this one bad game.

“Why would I watch it? I’ll watch a good movie instead, one where I win.”

I loved the movie Miracle, but you get the point. How you see the result of that day depends on which side you stood on.

When we open our minds we learn that the dreams and goals of people on the other side rarely are that dissimilar to our own. But when you are competing for a single Gold Medal it is a zero-sum game and eventually you come into conflict with one another. One side wins at the expense of the other; that is the nature of competitive sports.

What captivates in this film is the Soviet perspective and hockey history being shared. Soviet defenseman Slava Fetisov stands in the same locker room where he dressed for the games in Lake Placid. He walks onto the ice, standing at various spots to recall the game as if it were yesterday. Even more than three decades later, the disappointment remains visible.

Even the surprising decision after the first period to pull starting goalie Vladislav Tretiak, considered by many to be the best anywhere on the planet, is still controversial and divisive. In the film, Tretiak is a charismatic guy. He doesn’t question the decision openly but he does wonder aloud how the outcome may have been different had he played. His teammates were also hesitant to openly question their coach’s authority.

Anyone involved in sports who has lost a game they regret can identify with the feelings these men have. But most of us, if not all of us, have never felt the weight of disappointment and the pressure of a nation these men felt.

Perhaps the most striking part of the film was the decision by the director to play the audio from the Russian telecast. All who’ve seen it recall ABC’s Al Michaels yelling “Do You Believe in Miracles?” at the end of the game. It is one of the most famous calls in American television history. The Soviet television broadcaster is decidedly less excited, the disbelief apparent even in another language.

Ultimately the film is about the men who played, and the nation and the era they represented. While that day may be celebrated here as a miracle, it was anything but for those men. They returned home to pursue other triumphs. But their identities for us were brought to the fore because of the uniforms they wore on that fateful day.

As a kid I simply hated that team because they were the bad guys, the Soviets. The lesson of this film was these men were not Cold Warriors but rather simply men playing a game that they loved from the time they first skated. They became people that, through the film, you get the sense that you could relate to and whom you’d enjoy meeting.

The best parts in “Of Miracles and Men” are the glimpses given us into a different time, and into the lives of people not that different from us. Despite the passage of time and the differences between the two nations, we share more similarities in our human nature than we might have ever suspected. The more we study history across decades and centuries the more we find our own selves and human nature reflected in the actions of others.

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