So You’re Watching the Winter Olympics
Since I was nine years old I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the Winter Olympics. It was 1980, the year the Games were in Lake Placid and thus well-televised. I grew up in Oklahoma, which featured neither mountains nor heavy snow, so all the sports were essentially unavailable to me except for the indoor ones, and as for those I never got to any Tulsa Oilers games (at that age I was barely aware Tulsa even had a hockey team - soccer yes, hockey no) and I didn’t particularly care for figure skating.
But in 1980, two sports in particular appealed to me: hockey and bobsled. Hockey should be obvious here, since that was the Miracle On Ice (and I remember how the euphoria of the victory over Russia was tempered by the fact there was still ANOTHER GAME to play, and what a nail-biter that was). Bobsled, though, appealed to my nine-year-old, Oklahoman heart as only something unattainable could.
