The Winter Olympics are going full throttle right now over in Italy, and, sure, there's some serious drama happening – the American ice skating team seems to have been robbed of a gold medal by some rather suspect scoring by the French (of course) judge – but it just ain't like it used to be. It used to be all-out war.
I was talking about this with my teen daughter over the weekend. She isn't at all interested in the Winter Games, despite my best efforts to make her an Ilia Malinin superfan (he's the "quad god" figure skater who was favored to win gold, but fell short). He lives and trains in our area, and he's the son of Russian immigrants, but she's just not interested.
Ilia Malinin performed ANOTHER backflip, this time off ONE foot. 🤯#WinterOlympics
— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 9, 2026
📺 Primetime in Milan: After the Super Bowl on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/W6KKpiEGvG
In trying to figure out why my Gen-Z kid didn't appreciate the Games like her Gen-X mother does, I realized it's because I grew up during the latter part of the Cold War, and those Olympics seemed like all-out war to me. Every matchup between the U.S. and an Eastern Bloc country was an international skirmish, and the stakes seemed higher than just who would take the gold (or silver or bronze) medal.
The Soviet Union – with the dreaded "CCCP" emblazoned on their uniforms – were the supervillains and the ultimate bad guys. And, dang, their athletes were always really good.
I remember some of the 1970s-era Olympics; every girl back then knew about Nadia Comăneci and Dorothy Hamill (I even got the Dorothy Hamill haircut at one point). But, it was the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics that really drew me in. My older sisters were watching for speed skater Eric Heiden, but I just liked all of it.
Now, my Dad, who had complete control of the color TV in the rec room, was kind enough to move the old black-and-white set into the living room so we could consume as much of those Olympics as we wanted. And we consumed plenty. Who can forget the theme song that opened each Olympic broadcast? Things I learned today: John Williams was the composer.
When you heard that playing, you knew it was about to go down.
The Lake Placid Games, at least in my preteen mind, were extra tense and consequential because 52 Americans were being held hostage in Iran at that time. And all the action was on American soil/ice/snow, so the various showdowns with the evil CCCP and other communist nations seemed to have outsized importance.
That was, of course, the year of the Miracle on Ice. We got to watch that on the color TV, which shows just how important it was. I honestly don't remember too much about the game, but things in the rec room were tense and extremely nerve wracking – and it wasn't even a gold medal match.
Our boys went on to win the gold medal by beating Finland, and the image of them all crowding onto the podium after receiving their medals is iconic. In my mind, at least, we had kind of just won the Cold War.
I don't recall the other 80s-era Olympics being quite as interesting as we moved closer to the fall of communism, but it was always interesting watching the Soviet athletes. They were like cyborgs, having apparently been plucked out of their kindergartens to embark on years of non-stop training and conditioning. They always seemed to have nerves of steel – and that, I learned, comes with the fear that you and and your family will face some severe consequences if you didn't bring home that medal.
The Press Goes for Gold In Trashing the U.S. While Hailing the American Competing for the Chi-Coms
And, of course, it was always fun trying to figure out if the East German women athletes were actually female.
The modern-day Games just seem to be missing something, and it might be the unabashed patriotism that was on display during the Cold War-era competitions. We were in it together back then, a sentiment that's been a bit eroded of late. We've now got American athletes on foreign soil talking smack about their own country and their fellow countrymen, which would've been unheard of back in the day.
These days, the Olympics can feel less like a national mission and more like an influencer content stream. But, then, you see Haley Winn’s three brothers in the stands, dressed like walking American flag fireworks, losing their minds for Team USA, and you remember what the Games are supposed to feel like. They cheer like it matters because it still does.
