45 Years Between Miracles

On February 22, Team USA defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime to win the men's ice hockey gold medal at Milano Cortina 2026. It was the first American men's hockey gold since Lake Placid.

1980.

That year lives in my bones. It was the year I was supposed to compete in my second Olympic Games in Moscow. I was in the best shape of my rowing career. Our team was ready. And then our government decided that we would not go; that American athletes would pay the price for a political dispute between nations.

I filed suit against the United States Olympic Committee. I believed then, and I believe now, that athletes have a fundamental right to compete. The courts did not rule in our favor. But the IOC recognized the effort with the Bronze Medal of the Olympic Order, and the principle endured: athletes should never be used as political pawns.

While I was fighting that battle in 1980, a group of young American hockey players were doing something no one thought possible on the ice at Lake Placid. They defeated the Soviet Union and went on to win gold in what the world would call "The Miracle on Ice."

Forty-six years later, in a packed arena in Milan, Jack Hughes scored in overtime to give the United States another men's hockey gold. The women's team did the same thing just days earlier: defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime for their own gold medal. Two overtime victories. Two golden moments. One nation.

Here is what connects these stories across 46 years: the conviction that athletes deserve their moment. That sport, at its finest, produces outcomes no one can predict. That when you let people compete, extraordinary things happen.
The 1980 boycott stole that chance from 461 American athletes, including me. But sport endures. The flame keeps burning. And sometimes... 46 years later... you get your miracle.

~Anita

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