What’s the greatest sporting moment of all time?
If you’re an American, chance is the ‘Miracle On Ice’ likely comes out on top. This refers to the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid where the USA team made up of college players took the gold and beat the vaunted Russian team who won the last 3 Olympic golds and dominated the past 20 years. This book is a memoir written by the captain of the team, Mike Eruzione, chronicling his upbringing and his close-knit family, his college career with BU, the thrilling Olympic feat and the aftermaths.
How did the US Hockey team pull off this miracle and what can we learn to build a successful team?
- Physical preparation: The team had 5 months to work on their conditionings which ensure they didn’t get tired easily and usually won the third period when other skaters faltered. Good preparation is key to making sure you level the playing fields in many different ways
- Positive attitude: No one gave the team a chance but they felt they could compete in each game. The series of games they played and the results preceding the games gave them confidence that they could actually win. The emotional momentum and belief mattered
- Family/teamwork: The five months they had together bonded them into more than a team. The willingness to sacrifice for each other and push that little bit harder for your teammates
- Herb Brook’s leadership: He was methodical and put his team in the appropriate mindset to win. He employed psychological manipulation to push each player in the way that got the best out of then. He scheduled the right sequences of games to condition them and build up their believes. Not everyone can pull off the intimidation Brooks did but we can learn to be have a clear plan for the team and treat each player as individuals.
- Luck: Nine times out of ten they would likely lose the game. A different bounce of the puck and they would have not pulled out the amazing win. Not to take anything from their efforts but they’d be the first one to admit that it took some luck to make sure everything fell into place for this victory
I am not American and wasn’t born when The Miracle On Ice occurred. I only got to know about this achievement watching Miracle, a 2004 movie chronicling this exact event. I love sports and can only imagine what a an explosion of emotion it must be to witness such improbable feat. This book gets you to relive the experience through one of the key contributor and learn about the details of how the team was able to pull off this monumental upsets. It also showed an interesting blueprint of the type of tough love leadership and strategy that can produce result in such a spectacular manner.