Word: medal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Americans in Yugoslavia, Hamilton, 25, is closest to a shoo-in for a gold medal. He finished fifth at Lake Placid in 1980, but since September of that year, he has won all his competitions, including four U.S. and three world championships. For all his easy-looking successes, Hamilton has had the inevitable emotional kinks to straighten out. "You have all these idealistic values about what a champion should be," he says, "and suddenly you're thrust into living up to it. I felt I could never let down. I drove myself crazy. I was terrible to myself...
...need every break, need to go at full intensity to steal a medal...
...horn sounded, and Michaels and the nation exploded: "Yes!" With this victory and the next, a 4-2 win over Finland, the ragtag squad of 20 young amateur athletes had done more than bring U.S. hockey its first Olympic gold medal since 1960. For a few happy days, they had set America skating...
...dark chin and says, "This is probably the best U.S. team ever. But on skills alone we can't match the Swedes and Finns, let alone the Czechs and Russians. We'll need every break, need to go full time at full intensity, to steal a medal. Still, we know it can be done-the miracle of 1980 proves that...
Miracle. The word hangs around the necks of the '84 squad like a talisman and an albatross. The new team has traded in the pre-Olympic obscurity of their gold-medal predecessors for celebrity with an uneasy edge-avid media attention, sold-out exhibition games and an offer to pose en masse for Vogue-all in the reckless anticipation that miracles can strike twice. It puts unholy pressure on the young skaters, some of whom had hardly begun shaving four years ago, when Jim Craig, Mark Johnson and the rest were working their legerdemain at Lake Placid...