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  1. #1
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    The Greatest Sporting Event in History

    Member's of the winning team in the greatest sporting event in history - nothing remotely compares for significance, gravitas, sustained intensity, and drama - are conducting a cultural-historical tour.
    Toronto (Game Two) is in the itinerary.

    https://www.thestar.com/sports/hocke...ve-legacy.html

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    The title of this thread is hyperbolic at a minimum.

    While I admire the event as much as anyone, to call it the "Greatest Sporting Event in History" is way over the top, and imo inaccurate.

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    Canadian history, maybe, and even that is extremely debatable.
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    Quote Originally Posted by paulwoods13 View Post
    Canadian history, maybe, and even that is extremely debatable.
    No it isn't, are you freaking serious? How many Canadian sporting events have had a feature movie, at least five documentaries and numerous books written about them? I can't believe you posted that.

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    "Henderson has scored for Canada"
    Bill Brioux TV Feeds My Family September 30, 2012

    I’ve been up at the unplugged cottage, sanding and painting, so was not in front of my laptop Sept. 28 to do the 40th annual salute to St. Paul. A few catch up musings:

    Henderson’s goal was, without a doubt, the most electrifying thing I ever saw on TV. It is hard to put in context how galvanized Canada was by that ’72 summit series, but we were, coast to coast. As a 15-year-old high school student, it seemed like the Olympics and the Stanley Cup all rolled into one, times eleven.

    Just the whole exotic, behind-the-iron-curtain part of it ramped things up. Those last four games in Moscow were seen in Canada in the afternoon.

    Johnny Esaw (or Seesaw, as some called him), our Olympic guy before Brian Williams, added an international TV edge. That last Canadian game in Vancouver, so disappointing, found Esaw on the other end of one of the most real and riveting Canadian TV moments up to that point, Phil Esposito’s raw rant at us sucky fans. That was the turning point, the Rocky moment, the wake up call for everybody to find some balls and get behind this team.

    There hadn’t been many TV moments like that in Canada before. I remember Judy LaMarsh being caught on camera at the 1968 Liberal leadership convention telling a gaggle of fellow candidates, “Let’s get this bastard”—meaning Trudeau. That was a moment.

    Other than that, most of those live, candid TV moments had been American. The ‘60s brought so many—Johnson’s dramatic decision not to run in ’68, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that same year, the assassination, war and race riot reports, and of course, the moon landing.

    In Canada, up to that point, the big TV hot button had been the flag debate. Canada was all Hinterland Who’s Who. Gordon Sinclair asking Elaine Tanner on Front Page Challenge if her period got in the way of her Olympic swims was the biggest WTF moment.

    The ’72 series gripped the nation because it was hockey, because it was our best vs. their best, because it was a Cold War sub story, East vs. West, their training and system vs. our drinking and taking the summer off system.

    The shock to Canada’s pride after that first game was withering. I’d never seen my dad look so ill. Here was our chance to show those upstart Ruskie’s who the hockey boss is and we got our jock straps handed to us.

    For many Canadians, colour TV was still fairly new. To see live broadcasts from the Soviet Union added to the mystique.

    And then there was Henderson. The straight arrow Toronto Maple Leaf. The helmet wearer. The unlikeliest of heroes.

    His three straight game winning goals in Moscow is all he needs to get into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Wake up, HofF dummies.

    If you were a high school student, the Moscow games shoved everything else aside. Kids hid tiny transistor radios up their arms with headphones in their ears and passed along scores and penalties row by row. Teachers who caught them would demand they turn their damn radios up.

    By the eighth and final game, my high school was one of many which basically gave up. They did the unprecedented--gave us a day off to watch a hockey game. And who could blame them? All of Canada came to a dead stop (even if no one in most of the rest of the world gave a crap.)

    There were six or seven of us at my parent’s house on Dundas Street. The Clairtone was new and we were all glued to the game. When Canada was behind 5-3 heading into the third and final period (there would be no overtime), we all felt sick.

    It was like being in a tiny life boat in the middle of the churning ocean. The grand old man of hockey, Foster Hewitt, had come back to make this last call and he stretched those Russian names the same way he re-invented Corn-why-eh, but that didn’t matter. Him calling the games also made it epic.

    With those seconds ticking down, we were all standing, leading, praying. “Henderson makes a wild stab for it and fell.” You could see those guys were on the ropes with Canada storming back to tie the score. When Hewitt said, “Henderson scores for Canada!” that house on Dundas shook. We all leapt for the ceiling. We ran outside and screamed. It didn’t seem real.

    A few years ago when the Canadian men’s team won the Olympic gold medal CTV put out a release stating that was the most-watched TV moment ever in Canada. This is horseshit. There is no comparison.

    First of all the new ratings system introduced just prior to the Vancouver Games was still counting goldfish in the next room. Second, there were fewer entertainment distractions in 1972. There was no HBO or TSN or even CNN, just what you could pull in between channels two and 13 on the dial. City-TV was days old and you still needed a coat hanger and some tin foil to pull in their iffy UHF signal. There was no XBox or even a Betamax VHS machine attached to your parent's French Provincial set.

    The reality is there was no way to estimate how many Canadians tuned in in ’72. There were no overnights as ratings results came in weeks later. Up until the ‘90s, Global was still taking their Ontario estimate and doubling it to get the national score.

    The number, basically, was everybody. You weren’t going to miss this, and you would never forget it. Paul Henderson was our Neil Armstrong, and we were all over the moon.

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    Quote Originally Posted by paulwoods13 View Post
    Canadian history, maybe, and even that is extremely debatable.
    Quote Originally Posted by Argoknot View Post
    No it isn't, are you freaking serious? How many Canadian sporting events have had a feature movie, at least five documentaries and numerous books written about them? I can't believe you posted that.
    I have to admit Paul that I am hard-pressed to think of any other sporting event in Canada that was more significant.
    Do you have any suggestions of which are?

    FYI, to me the greatest sporting event in history was Jesse Owens performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in front of Adolf Hitler.

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    Canada Russia 72 Primer

    The Movie



    Cold War on Ice (The first doc shown on NBC Sports Network) American made and extremely well done (tells the story well)



    PBS - Red Files: Soviet Sports Wars - This excellent doc contains a three story arc one of which was the 72 series. The others are the Soviet gymnastic program and 60's long jumpers Igor Ter-Ovanesyan and Ralph Boston's friendship (would make a great movie)

    https://vimeo.com/album/189109/video/8575797

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    Depends how you define greatest, doesn't it? Longest? Most surprising? Closest? Most incredible athletic performances? Most viewed? Most emotion swings? The Summit Series rates highly in Canadian history on some of those criteria but so do other events including 1987 Canada Cup, 2002 and 2010 Olympic hockey, Donovan Bailey and men's relay in 1996.
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    Quote Originally Posted by paulwoods13 View Post
    Depends how you define greatest, doesn't it? Longest? Most surprising? Clos but not even closeest? Most incredible athletic performances? Most viewed? Most emotion swings? The Summit Series rates highly in Canadian history on some of those criteria but so do other events including 1987 Canada Cup, 2002 and 2010 Olympic hockey, Donovan Bailey and men's relay in 1996.
    That's some serious backpeddling you've got going on there. Even by your own criteria, it still comes out on top. None of those are even close, big events yes, but not close. There was still a Cold War mentality in the 70s unlike the events that came later. By the time the other events happened we were a far different country.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Argoknot View Post
    That's some serious backpeddling you've got going on there. Even by your own criteria, it still comes out on top. None of those are even close, big events yes, but not close.
    In your opinion. Not necessarily mine.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by GreyDragon View Post
    FYI, to me the greatest sporting event in history was Jesse Owens performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in front of Adolf Hitler.
    That's an interesting one because it's a combination of fact and myth. His on track exploits are obviously fact, the Hitler stuff, who knows.

    The following narrative always seemed to me to be closer to a logical truth

    Myths and Truth: Jesse Owens in Germany

    Hitler did shun a black American athlete at the 1936 Games. On the first day of the Olympics, just before Cornelius Johnson, an African-American athlete who won the first gold medal for the U.S. that day, was to receive his award, Hitler left the stadium early. (The Nazis later claimed it was a previously scheduled departure.)

    Prior to his departure, Hitler had received a number of winners, but Olympic officials informed the German leader that in the future he must receive all of the winners or none at all. After the first day, he opted to acknowledge none. Jesse Owens had his victories on the second day, when Hitler was no longer in attendance. Would Hitler have snubbed Owens had he been in the stadium on day two? Perhaps. But since he wasn't there, we can only surmise.

    Which brings us to another Olympic myth. It is often stated that Jesse Owens' four gold medals humiliated Hitler by proving to the world that Nazi claims of Aryan superiority were a lie. But Hitler and the Nazis were far from unhappy with the Olympic results. Not only did Germany win far more medals than any other country at the 1936 Olympics, but the Nazis had pulled off the huge public relations coup that Olympic opponents had predicted, casting Germany and the Nazis in a positive light. In the long run, Owens' victories turned out to be only a minor embarrassment for Nazi Germany.

    In fact, Jesse Owens' reception by the German public and the spectators in the Olympic stadium was warm. There were German cheers of “Yesseh Oh-vens” or just “Oh-vens” from the crowd. Owens was a true celebrity in Berlin, mobbed by autograph seekers to the point that he complained about all the attention. He later claimed that his reception in Berlin was greater than any other he had ever experienced, and he was quite popular even before the Olympics.

    “Hitler didn't snub me—it was [FDR] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.” ~Jesse Owens, quoted in Triumph, a book about the 1936 Olympics by Jeremy Schaap.

    I would say the Luz Long stuff is true as well because we have film evidence of it (and the above).



    Even more interesting, from Wikipedia: His achievement of setting three world records and tying another in less than an hour at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport" and has never been equalled.
    Last edited by Argoknot; 08-30-2016 at 11:08 AM.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by paulwoods13 View Post
    In your opinion. Not necessarily mine.
    I seriously have to question your credibility as a writer, no, actually I don't with the quality of media today. It was the biggest event, case closed. Was it Freud (apocryphal) who said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" It is what it is, whether you like it or not.

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    "Case closed" means no opinion other than yours is valid. On whether the earth is round or flat, I'd agree with you. On whether one of a million sporting events was the greatest ever, sorry but I believe more than one opinion is valid. If that makes me an un-credible writer, I can live with that. Whether you like it or not.
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    Ok, I'm gonna do to you what you do when you criticize people who can't fight back in this forum. I'm calling you out on making an exceptionally stupid comment and having no evidence to back up said comment.

    It almost seems you have a bone to pick with that historical event. were you a closet Communist at the time or something one of those revisionist Bobby Clarke hating SJWs, think Paul Henderson is a hypocrite, Summit Series deny-er (sic)?

    There has got to be some story behind making a comment as dumb as that on something so obvious.

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    "Argoknot", your hostility is becoming a problem. Again. It isn't your place to interrogate other members and demand satisfaction.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Wobbler View Post
    "Argoknot", your hostility is becoming a problem. Again. It isn't your place to interrogate other members and demand satisfaction.
    Damn right it is, when he says he can dish it out and he has to take it as well. And how come threads are suddenly closing and people are being banned when you pop back on the scene? Forum was doing just fine without you.

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    Case closed = mind closed, apparently.
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    Quote Originally Posted by paulwoods13 View Post
    Case closed = mind closed, apparently.
    Argue semantics all you want to deflect the argument, you have no evidence and ZERO answers. Keep peddling. Your usual condescension won't get you out of this one, insert maniacal laugh... mooowhahahahaha.

    So what event was bigger? Should be easy to prove if it topped 72.

  19. #19
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    I have to agree that the 1972 Summit Series victory is the greatest Canadian sporting event in history. This was the first time that Canada put its best players against the Soviet "amateurs." From what I understand many thought it would be a walk in the park for Canada, but it proved to be nothing like that. The cultural impact that this series had transcended sport. Mario Lemieux's goal in 1987 was in perhaps just as dramatic a situation (within the game), but it hasn't had the cultural impact on our country that 1972 did. I suppose, one could make an argument for the 2010 Winter Olympics because Canada hosted it and was quite successful, but I don't see it having the lasting impact in Canadian consciousness as did the 1972 Summit Series.
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    Case closed.

    CFL 1995: Calgary Stampeders vs Toronto Argonauts in the last game of the season. No game in history has had a greater impact to Canadian Culture.

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