Two Olympic Games dark horses – American hockey player Mark Johnson and Canadian alpine skier Kerrin Lee-Gartner – know the benefits of being an unsuspecting athlete on the cusp of victory. And now they both give back to the sports that brought them such success.
Mark Johnson was a member of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team in Lake Placid. He was a key scorer in the tournament – especially in the game against the Soviet Union. That game, of course, is now known as the “Miracle on Ice”. The US team went on to win a gold medal by beating Finland. While the US victory over the Soviet Union wasn’t a complete miracle in Johnson’s mind, he said the team definitely wasn’t expecting a medal that year.
“You look at what the Swedes had. You look at what the Czechs had. Our team’s task at hand was going to be a difficult one just to get into the medal round,” said Johnson. “It was sort of a given that the Russians had it.”
http://www.vancouver2010.com
2007-10-20