The Miracle...I'd love to see it.

[JordanCS]

I was too young to remember the 1980 Miracle on Ice (25th anniversary!), being only 3, and I would so very much love to see the whole broadcast.  Of course, I've seen the film, and I've seen clips from the game, but I have never seen the whole thing....

I'm of course wondering why they haven't released it in a box set or something on DVD, but until then, anyone know where I could get a copy of the broadcast?  Unfortunately, living overseas, I don't get ESPN Classic right now, and I understand they did a rebroadcast the other night.

[CUlater 89]

It was on ESPN Classic last night, only I didn't realize it until 1 a.m., so I missed taping most of the game (got the last 13 minutes or so).  If anybody recorded the whole thing, I'd be interested in purchasing a copy.

[KateWithThe8]

A quick search finds this article about the story on ESPN:  http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=1996974
Looks like the gold medal game against Finland is being aired tomorrow night at 8pm on ESPNC.  Alas, I don't see any more showings of the game against the Soviets.

[jtwcornell91]

Did they show the whole thing, or was it edited?

[Josh 03]

It was editied and ran for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, start to finish.

[CUlater 89]

[Q]Josh 03 Wrote:

 It was editied and ran for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, start to finish.[/q]

I assume not including commercials and other stuff, since the time slot during which I recorded was 11:30 to 2 (2.5 hours).

[adamw]

[Q]Josh 03 Wrote:

 It was editied and ran for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, start to finish.[/q]

I'm not sure an unedited version exists.

[KateWithThe8]

Forgive me if I am beating a dead topic here, but I hadn't heard about the festivities going on up in Lake Placid this week to celebrate the anniversary:  http://www.uscho.com/news/2005/02/22_010037.php  Sounds neat.

[Jim Hyla]

I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but the program was 2.5 hours on ESPN Classic. I did capture it on my DVR, so I'll watch it and if my Formac Studio DV/TV (thanks Age) comes today as expected I can start to learn to burn DVD's on my Mac. I'll let everybody know what I come up with. As an aside, this looks like a great analog/digital converter. It has a built in TV tuner, so if I had it already I could have recorded the game directly to my Mac and burnt the DVD's. Stay tuned. **]

[RichH]

[Q]CUlater 89 Wrote:

I assume not including commercials and other stuff, since the time slot during which I recorded was 11:30 to 2 (2.5 hours).[/q]

That's because the ESPN Classic airing Tuesday night was the "Big Ticket" production that was aired right around the release of "Miracle" where host John Buccigross was on air more than the game footage.  They'd show 10 minutes of the game, and then Buccigross would ask Mike Eruzione and Jim Craig such fresh, new questions as "what went through your mind when the buzzer sounded?"  Even with 2.5 hours, they still "jumped ahead in the action."

Sunday night's broadcast on ESPN was a straight 1.5 hour airing of the edited game.

Un-edited copies of the game do indeed exist.  In the early '80s, ABC did a rebroadcast of the full game sometime around the holidays, as all the cutaways to commercials read "Happy Holidays!".  My copy of that unfortunately got lost on a bus trip up to the ECACs in '01.  I replaced that with a copy of the original tape-delayed broadcast of the game, which, in ABC's infinite suspense-building decision cut away several times mid-period (not intermissions) to show footage of US skiier Phil Mahre's run to Silver that day.  The quality of that tape is lower than the one I lost.  I also have a poor copy of the US-Finland game.

I got my tapes off of eBay.  With the DVD revolution, I'm sure the same bootlegged copies exist there, but you'll probably find more of the ESPN Classic version.  This week, I found these websites that people can order allegedly the best quality bootlegged copies both on DVD and VHS, for a pretty steep price.

DVD: http://www.hdhockey.tv/miracleonice.html
VHS: http://webpages.charter.net/phentensports/order.html#1980

As I said in the other thread, they really should have an officially licsenced boxed DVD set of the Olympic run.  There are only 7 US games.  One reason I thought of for not releasing them is that Disney wants to milk all they can out of sales of the "Miracle" DVD.

[Steve M]

I watched most of the ESPN classic broadcast.  Portions of the game were edited out, but I would say they showed over half of the game.  I only remember seeing one play whistled offsides, in stark contrast to the NCAA final last year.  The game was so much more wide open and fun to watch then.  Part of the reason the broadcast took so long is that Craig and Eruzione were commenting on the game during breaks.  It was very interesting.