Sports and the Cold War: What Was the Connection?

Therefore, when an ice hockey match between the pair began at the Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games in February 1980, the game represented much more than an ordinary sporting contest. Since the close of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union had been pitted against one another in a battle of ideology and strength. Through the accumulation of nuclear armaments and proxy wars like the Korean War and the Vietnam War, these political superpowers fought for dominance. At the start of the 1980s, the Cold War was no longer at the fever pitch that had seen the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold. But the US still generally saw the Soviet Union as its primary enemy. In fact, after a decade of reduced tensions and détente, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 had worsened the two foes’ relations again. But more broadly, the Miracle on Ice can be seen as a key moment in the course of the Cold War and the world’s perception of the two foes involved in it. The Soviet Union had been seen as unbeatable, but they were beaten. If that could happen on the ice, couldn’t it also happen in a broader arena? Perhaps the Russians weren’t so intimidating after all.

After World War II and with the beginning of the Cold War, football along with all other international sports became a tool of proving the superiority of Communism over capitalism (or vice versa). As early as 1952, it even figured in the dispute between different forms of Communism. When the Soviet Union was drawn against Yugoslavia in the first round of the 1952 Olympic football competition in Helsinki, Stalin expected his team to exact revenge. Unfortunately for him, Yugoslavia won.