The night started like so many others in newsrooms across the country. By the end, newspapers were scrambling to figure out how to handle the most iconic moment in our nation’s sports history.
It was 40 years ago Saturday. I was working at the Boston Globe as part of the cooperative education program at Northeastern University. The Olympics were being staged about 300 miles away in Lake Placid, New York. Other than Eric Heiden winning five speed skating gold medals, accounting for all but one captured by the United States, the U.S. appeared to be headed toward nothing more than a footnote at these Games, not atypical for the Winter Games, then usually dominated by the Soviet Union and East Germany.