Heiden 's golden hoard and a hockey upset highlight the Lake Placid Games
The hoisting of the five-ringed Olympic flag supposedly internationalizes a site, enfolding it in the pristine and timeless kingdom of sport. But the Winter Games at Lake Placid seemed to bear a distinctly American stamp, from the incredible hoard of gold in speed skating to the site itself, a pleasant little mountain town swamped by the world. The Games provided a kind of ritual relief during a troubled American moment, supplanting cold war fears with cheers for an ice hockey upset. Like all Olympics, the 13th Winter Games left a gallery of bright images on the retina:
> The American hockey team exploding with jubilation after beating the seemingly invincible Soviets, 4-3, in one of the most astonishing upsets in Olympic history, and then exploding again after defeating the scrappy Finns, 4-2, for a gold medal.
> Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark snaking through the slalom gates with seemingly offhanded genius.
> America's Phil Mahre, skiing with four screws and a metal plate in an ankle he had shattered just a year ago on the same mountain, winning a silver in the slalom, trailing only the mighty Stenmark.
> Austria's Annemarie Moser-Pröll working the women's downhill course with the no-nonsense smacking-and-caressing style of a baker kneading dough.
> East Germany's four-man bobsled team rattling down the refrigerated run on Mount Van Hoevenberg in 59.86 sec., breaking the one-minute barrier for the first time ever, then breaking it again the next day, in 59.73 sec.
> Alexander Tikhonov's teammates hurling him in the air after his smooth skiing and deadeye shooting helped them win the four-man biathlon relay. For the Soviet army major, it was an unprecedented fourth gold in four Winter Olympics.
The two weeks were filled with stunning performances, but two were truly memorable. The underdog U.S. hockey team conquered all with its boundless enthusiasm, typically playing its best and scoring the goal that put the game against the Finns on ice when it was shorthanded because of penalties. Afterward, President Carter phoned Coach Herb Brooks to say: "We were trying to do business, and nobody could. We were watching TV with one eye and Iran and the economy with the other." But even the thrilling hockey victory could not overshadow the accomplishments of a young and unassuming speed skater from the Midwest. Perhaps the most vivid single image of the 1980 Winter Games was the sight of Eric Heiden's heroically muscled thighs molded in a skating skin of gold as he stroked his way to five Olympic golds, five Olympic records and one world record. Nothing in Olympic history rivals that performance.
For chauvinists and chroniclers, the race for medals was hardly a race: the East Germans and Soviets, as usual, scooped up medals by the fistful. But thanks to Heiden and the hockey team, the U.S. did remarkably well: six golds, to nine for the East Germans and ten for the Soviets. On a per capita basis, however, the hands-down winner of the Lake Placid Games was tiny Liechtenstein (pop. 24,000); the brother-and-sister skiing act of Andreas and Hanni Wenzel whisked to two golds and two silvers.