My friend Robert asked me what I thought of the Winter Olympics currently in their second and final week in Beijing. We were taking a break during our tennis match at The Indoor Court in East Providence.
I told him I wasn’t paying close attention and that I had written about the absurdity of Beijing hosting these Winter Games. The city is not synonymous with winter sports. A repressive regime rules China. The coronavirus that has crippled life throughout the world started in China. Russia, the doping capital of the sports world, is flashing a middle finger to clean competitors after the reinstatement of 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva, the gold medal favorite who had tested positive for a banned substance. No spectators to cheer the competitors. Olympic venues sealed from the outside world except for NBC television cameras.
Robert riffed that he is disillusioned with the Olympics and the politics, corruption, cheating, nationalism, jingoism, and materialism that go along with the Games now, not to mention the ridiculous amount of money required to prepare for and stage this quadrennial spectacle. He would do away with national anthems and flag waving. He would have the International Olympic Committee find a permanent mountain home for the Winter Games and refresh Athens for the Summer Games. The Greek capital served as the site of the first modern Olympics in 1896 and again in 2000.
I agreed with most of his objections but stopped at flag waving and nationalism. A little nationalism is okay. What about those flag-waving Americans chanting “U-S-A” as the U.S. hockey team shocked the mighty Soviet Union, 4-3, on a Friday afternoon at Lake Placid in 1980 and won the gold medal two days later? Or Jesse Owens, a Black American track athlete from Ohio, winning four gold medals in Hitler’s face in Berlin in 1936. Or thousands of Norwegians, who embrace winter sports the way we do football, waving their nation’s colors in the hills above Lillehammer in 1994? Or speed skater Erin Jackson doing a victory lap while holding an American flag overhead after becoming the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal (500 meters on Feb. 13) in the Winter Olympics.
What’s wrong with that?
Athletes and coaches work for years to experience such recognition. Even from our little state of Rhode Island, every Olympics we send a contingent of hopefuls, and this year is no different. David Quinn from Cranston coached the U.S. men’s hockey team that lost to Slovakia in a shootout and will finish fifth. Dave Lassonde, a PC alum and respected goalie coach, assisted Quinn with the men’s team. Ali Domenico, associate head coach at Providence College, is an assistant with the Canadian women’s hockey team that will go for gold. Sara Hjalmarsson, a PC senior, made her second Olympics appearance with the Swedish hockey team. Brown alum Madison Woo skated for China’s women’s hockey team, and Brown hockey alum Alena Mills skated for the Czech women’s team. Vincent Zhou, a Brown student in 2019, won a silver medal in team figure skating for the U.S. but tested positive for COVID-19 and withdrew from the men’s event. Aaron Ness of the Providence Bruins got his chance to skate with Team USA when the NHL backed out of the Olympics in December. Ditto for 31-year-old David Warsofsky, whose hockey odyssey has taken him from Marshfield, Mass., to Boston University to the Providence Bruins from 2010 to 2014, and multiple stops in the NHL, AHL and Germany before landing on the U.S. Olympic team this year.
As for national anthems, I can think of no greater honor in sports than standing on a podium with a gold medal dangling from my neck as my country’s flag is raised to the tune of my national anthem. I can still see U.S. hockey captain Mike Eruzione waving his teammates forward during the medal ceremony in Lake Placid. And American skier Picabo Street weeping openly as the Star Spangled Banner played in Nagano in 1998. And the U.S. women in Nagano celebrating their 3-1 victory over archival Canada for the first women’s ice hockey gold medal in Olympic history by holding hands and waving American flags.
U.S. versus Canada in women’s ice hockey. Now there is a perfect illustration of how nationalism and fierce yet honorable competition can co-exist. They are the best women’s programs in the world. They have battled in the Olympics and in world championships. As individuals, they have played with and against each other in college.
Forward Katie King was one of the stars of the U.S. team in 1998. She had graduated from Brown in 1997 after a stellar two-sport career and went on to play for the U.S. National Team until 2006. Along the way she picked up Olympic gold in Nagano, silver in Salt Lake City in 2002 and bronze in Turin in 2006. She added a gold and five silvers from the world championships. She is in her 15th season as head coach at Boston College, is a two-time national coach of the year and last month received an NCAA Silver Anniversary Award for her accomplishments in the 25 years since she left Brown.
King was also a star pitcher for the Brown softball team. She holds the school record for most games and innings pitched, is second in career wins and third in career strikeouts. She was Brown’s outstanding female athlete as a senior in 1996-97.
Defender Tara Mounsey was King’s teammate at Brown and on the ’98 and ’02 Olympic teams. She also skated in two world championships.
Becky Kellar was another of King’s teammates on the ice and on the diamond at Brown. She played defense in hockey and second base in softball and was All-Ivy twice in softball.
Kellar also played hockey for the Olympic team in 1998. Canada’s Olympic team. She won three gold medals after Nagano and added four gold and three silver in the world championships before retiring in 2010. She also was a top defender in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League.
King, Mounsey, and Kellar, teammates at Brown, ultimately Brown Hall of Famers, rivals on international ice. Does it get any better?
The U.S. and Canada skated for the gold medal again Thursday, exactly 24 years after their first showdown in Nagano. It was their sixth final in the seven tournaments women have played hockey for hardware. Canada won, 3-2, thanks to a pair of goals and an assist from captain Marie-Philip Poulin for a 3-0 lead, a tough defense, and 38 saves by goalkeeper Ann-Renee Desbiens. The U.S. captain, Hilary Knight, playing in her fourth Olympics, scored a short-handed goal with 3:21 remaining in the second period. The Americans finally went into attack mode in the third period and outshot Canada, 16-4. But Desbiens stopped everything until Amanda Kessel scored a power play goal from a frantic scramble in front with 13.5 seconds left. Alas, it was a too little, too late.
Canada avenged a gold-medal loss to the U.S. in 2018, now leads the Olympic gold series with its neighbors, 4-2, and has won five gold medals overall. Canada beat Sweden in the 2006 final.
Talented young women wearing red and blue uniforms of Canada and red, white and blue of the United States played for Olympic glory Thursday in Beijing, North America bragging rights, national pride, and the chance to wave their colors and hear their national anthem. And that was okay.
