A lot of nostalgic prose has just shown up in the press about that glorious night in Lake Placid 20 years ago when the doughty American Olympic hockey team toppled the mighty Soviets. It was the height of the cold war, the Soviets ruled the hockey world, and no one gave the Americans a chance. The Soviets dominated international hockey then too. But in Squaw Valley that year the Americans beat the Soviets and won the Olympic gold medal. Astonished as this country was then, it acted less giddy than it would 20 years later, perhaps because mass communications weren't so enveloping and perhaps because the cold war seemed so much more weighty in 1960 that sporting events didn't measure up as a surrogate.
Nothing's wrong with journalism that indulges memories the public already holds.
But any story gets better if you dig, even if you're only digging up history. Though nobody I read mentioned it, what happened at the 1980 Olympics happened for the second time. Inc. All rights reserved.