Enchanted by the Winter Olympics

“But on one weekend, as America and the world watched, a group of remarkable young men gave the nation what it needed most—a chance, for one night, not only to dream, but a chance, once again, to believe.”

Miracle is my favorite sports movie for a myriad of reasons. It has hockey, Olympic glory, and a cute actor playing the goaltender. What more could a girl want?

In all seriousness, the story of Miracle—a team of scrappy college players taking down the Russian powerhouse team in the midst of the Cold War—is one of the most compelling sports stories in recent history. And though historical context has elevated the 1980 US men’s hockey team to legendary status, every Olympics is filled with similarly-compelling stories. The Vancouver Games are no exception.

The Olympics have fascinated me ever since the 1996 Atlanta torch relay took a spin through my hometown. I remember excitedly standing on the side of the street with my family, waiting for the torch to be carried past. When I realized that the long wait had all been to see some random person in a tracksuit carry a tiny flame past, my seven-year-old self was understandably peeved.

Then the Games started. The US women’s gymnastics team won the gold medal. Kerri Strug became my new idol, and Olympic gymnast became my new dream profession—never mind the fact that I was about eight months removed from a broken arm sustained when I couldn’t get onto a balance beam properly.

1998. Nagano. Tara Lipinski won gold, I wanted to be an ice skater. To this day, I still can’t skate backwards.

2000. Sydney. I finally fixated on a sport I was actually capable of competing in—swimming. It took a few more seasons to convince me that if I wasn’t the best on my rec team, I wasn’t going to make the Olympics anytime soon.

Since then, I’ve given up the dream of making an Olympic squad myself. But the Games still capture my attention just as much as they ever did.

Over halfway through competition in Vancouver, I’ve done my best to keep up with the storylines: Apolo Anton Ohno’s record seventh medal, for example, or the surprise emergence of the American men’s hockey team.

But the sport that has drawn me in this time is one that’s a little less mainstream—women’s hockey. With all but the medal games left to play, the tournament has lacked the drama of the men’s competition, and there isn’t really a feel-good underdog story to draw viewers in.

Instead, the bracket has played out just as predicted—the Americans and the Canadians bulldozed all of their opponents to earn their spots in tomorrow’s gold-medal game.

So why the interest? Well, it has a lot to do with the five Harvard alumnae skating for the two squads. Having seen American Caitlin Cahow ’07-’08 and Canadian Sarah Vaillancourt ’08-’09 play for the Crimson, I find it that much cooler to watch them skate on national television. Interviewing the other three alums—US assistant captains Angela Ruggiero ’02-’04 and Julie Chu ’06-’07 and Canadian Jennifer Botterill ’02-’03—has also made me appreciate both the drive and the perspective the athletes bring to the competition.

And, of course, being able to watch my high-school cross-country teammate, US goalie Molly Schaus, live out her dream has been pretty amazing as well.

Because when it comes down to it, that’s what the Olympics are all about—watching dreams come true.

In professional sports these days, it seems that all too often athletes get wrapped up in the value of their next contract or endorsement deal and forget why they started playing in the first place. Stories of clubhouse antics, steroid use, and lockouts grab more headlines than the feel-good tales of perseverance, selflessness, and the love of the game.

When the Olympics roll around, it’s not about the money—or, for many competitors, about the medals. It’s about the chance to represent your country, to compete against the world’s best no matter the result, and to tell the story of how you got there.

That’s not to say that the Games are a perfect competition. Just last week, Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko publicly declared that he should have won the gold medal over eventual victor Evan Lysacek—a statement that doesn’t exactly scream “good sport.”

But in the Olympics, the touching stories far outweigh the rest. And to see one of those stories—like that of Chinese figure skaters Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, who came out of retirement for one last shot at a gold medal—end in the fulfillment of a lifelong dream? Well, that’s why I love sports—and the chance to tell those stories, albeit on a smaller scale, is why I’ve stuck around The Crimson as long as I have.

So when I watch tomorrow’s women’s hockey gold-medal game, I’ll do my best to keep that sense of wonder in mind. For either squad, anything less than a top finish will be a disappointment—a dream unfulfilled. To work that hard for so long for one game? That sort of drama is as much a part of the fabric of the story of these Olympics as the tales of adversity and triumph.

But getting the chance to wear your country’s uniform in a celebration of the best sports has to offer? In that sense, the dream has already come true for every athlete in these Games.

“Any time you get a chance to be a part of the Olympic Games, [it’s] humbling in every way,” said Chu, a three-time Olympic veteran, in October. “It makes us realize that we’re just a small part of something that is much bigger than a win or a loss.”

Tomorrow night’s game probably won’t be remembered by the public as vividly as 1980’s Miracle on Ice. But for the women skating in it, it represents the same idea—a celebration of the belief that dreams really do come true.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.