Every person who knows anything about sports knows what the 1980 winter Olympics in Lake Placid New York meant to hockey in the United States.
The United States hockey program was minuscule compared to that of foreign countries like the USSR, Canada, Sweden.
The team comprised of young college hockey players looking to make a name for themselves. What happened that Olympics would take that team down in history as one of the biggest underdog stories to ever happen in sports.
The reason why that team and story is so prolific is because the players on the team were just kids who were given the chance to showcase what the best the United States as a country had to offer to the rest of the world in a sport that we were not known as a power house in.
Olympics today are filled with professional athletes in all team sports in both the summer and winter Olympic games.
The Olympics has lost that edge that it once possessed. The youth and up and coming players for countries are not having the chance to be showcased to the world because professional athletes are allowed to participate in Olympic games.
In the early 90's the United States had "The Dream Team." There was no way possible that those teams in the early 90's had a chance against the leviathan that was the United States.
The Olympic board should go back to allowing only amateurs participate in the Olympics. This would give people a chance to witness athletes that we have not heard of.
Who would not want to see another team like the 1980 USA hockey team again go up against another country like Russia who is the best in the world?
Have the chance to watch another group of young men or women go up against adversity, and win a gold medal when they were given no chance at all.
Going back to amateurs only in the Olympics would have the Olympics back to what it is suppose to be.
Who would not want to see another 1980 Lake Placid happen again, and be able to say you were able to witness the impossible happen.
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