ESSAY: The Miracle That Almost Wasn't

What follows is an essay that I wrote for an upcoming book. In the editing process, I realized that it didn't fit with the rest of them. Instead of leaving it on the cutting room floor never to be seen, here it is.

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Herb Brooks, Mike Eruzione and even Al Michaels have probably never heard of Dick Lamm. But they should shake his hand. If it weren’t for him, the Miracle on Ice never would have happened.

On May 12, 1970, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1976 Winter Olympics to the United States. Denver, Colorado would host the Games.

16 years prior, Aspen and Colorado Springs launched a joint effort to bring the 1960 Olympics to Colorado. Those Games were hosted in the United States, but at Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe.

After having Olympics in Austria, France and Japan, the Games were ready to come back to America. Denver beat out Switzerland in the final vote. When the Denver bid committee returned home they were greeted as heroes. A brass band and motorcade toured through the Mile High City.

The glory was short lived. Thanks to a member of the Colorado General Assembly named Dick Lamm. He didn’t want the Olympics in Colorado. And he set out to turn the public against them. Some were worried about the impact on the environment. Others were worried that the state would become overcrowded. Mostly, as it always is, it was about money.

And on November 7, 1972, the voters spoke. 59.4% of Coloradans said they weren’t willing to spend their tax dollars on hosting the Olympics. And like that, the Games were gone. Without funding, the IOC moved the Games to Austria, the host in 1964.

Denver did what no other city or country has ever done to this day: turn down a successful Olympic bid.

The Games went on. Franz Klammer represented the host country well, winning gold in downhill skiing. Dorothy Hamill took home the figure skating gold for the U.S. Everyone had a good time.

The story of the 1976 Winter Olympics ends there. But this is just the beginning. What those Colorado voters didn’t realize in 1972 is that vote created two timelines. A no vote created the timeline that we’ve lived in ever since.

But a yes vote would have created a timeline where the 1976 Olympics are held in the United States. Meaning the 1980 Olympics would have not been held in Lake Placid, New York.

In the timeline we know, Vancouver and Lake Placid were the only bids for the 1980 Games. But in the other timeline, there’s no chance North America would receive back-to-back Olympics.

Some people might think where the Olympics were held wouldn’t have affected the outcome. That the 1980 team of American college hockey players would still have upset the Soviets if the game was played in Finland, Japan, or Yugoslavia. I don’t buy it for a second.

How life unfolds is fragile.

The U.S. had requested to move the medal round game from 5pm to 8pm so it could be shown live in prime-time. The Soviets declined because that would have been a 4am start in Moscow. If that puck drops three hours later, I don’t think Schneider ties the game 14:03 into the first. Or that Johnson puts a rebound home one second before the first period buzzer. Even a simple change of the time of the game and I don’t think Johnson and Eruzione score two goals in the third and hold on for the victory.

So if the game was held in a different country with different flags waving and different fans pounding on the glass, I don’t think the game unfolds the same way.

What some consider the greatest moment in sports history would never have happened if it weren’t for some penny-pinching Colorado voters. We would never have known it was possible.