USA!

[appvette]

Did Russia boycott this years or were they banned.....what happened to the russian hockey machine??

Russia was banned after their invasion of Ukraine.

I thought about this a few times during the last two weeks. You just know there's some poor Russians cleaning their rifles in the Ukrainian wilderness complaining like, "We are SO much better than these guys! We should be there!"

Maybe they need to be reminded of the Sochi games where they cheated the whole time. But, I do miss the old days when our amateurs competed against the USSR pros.

I still get nervous twitches when I go over the 1972 men's basketball game vs. USSR. That was the most blatant form of cheating (2 times) you'll ever witness in a basketball game. The USA team refused to accept the silver medals, refused to take the podium, and if I remember those silvers are somewhere in storage with the IOC.

For those young 'uns who have no clue what I'm look it up sometime. All you need to watch is the last 3:00 of the game.

I wasn't born yet, but growing up in Avery County, I heard plenty about it since local legend Tommy Burleson was on that team. My dad knew Tommy and I played basketball with his son and also worked with him in high school.

[scatman77]

Russia was banned after their invasion of Ukraine.

I thought about this a few times during the last two weeks. You just know there's some poor Russians cleaning their rifles in the Ukrainian wilderness complaining like, "We are SO much better than these guys! We should be there!"

Maybe they need to be reminded of the Sochi games where they cheated the whole time. But, I do miss the old days when our amateurs competed against the USSR pros.

I still get nervous twitches when I go over the 1972 men's basketball game vs. USSR. That was the most blatant form of cheating (2 times) you'll ever witness in a basketball game. The USA team refused to accept the silver medals, refused to take the podium, and if I remember those silvers are somewhere in storage with the IOC.

For those young 'uns who have no clue what I'm look it up sometime. All you need to watch is the last 3:00 of the game.

I wasn't born yet, but growing up in Avery County, I heard plenty about it since local legend Tommy Burleson was on that team. My dad knew Tommy and I played basketball with his son and also worked with him in high school.

Back then the USSR players were "amateurs" as well. Only thing was that they'd go to work in a factory so to speak for a couple hours and then spend 6 hours a day practicing basketball. They couldn't stand the fact that USA collegiate basketball was so much superior to their "amateurs."

[Bigdaddyg1]

It’s crazy to think that the 1980 hockey game (played in Lake Placid) was not even shown live on television. I had to look up the format and they used a 4 team round robin for the finals. In addition whatever points each of the final 4 earned in the initial round was carried over. The US earned 1 point and of course after beating the Soviets we still had to win the last game for the gold medal. I vaguely remember hearing about the win as I was probably a high school sophomore or junior at the time. I’m sure that a huge segment of our population had no idea how huge that win was. Many folks for many years hated the notion of letting paid professional athletes participate in the Olympics but personally I have no problem with it. That game Sunday would not have garnered any attention had it been played by college players for both teams.

[biggie]

Removed politics out, stop or this thread will be gone again.