Anyone else getting tired of that commercial where Pinball talks about Damon Allen? To paraphrase, "Every time he drops back to pass, HISTORY is made. Every time he throws the ball, HISTORY is made."
Good promotional skills by Pinball. But here's the problem: sports records are not, and never will be, "history". The proper word is "trivia". Sports journalists make this mistake all the time.
Sporting events that qualify as "history" are few and far between. They need to have some broader societal implications to ever have a chance of being written up in a history book read by future generations.
Examples:
Jackie Robinson breaks the colour barrier
The Rocket Richard riots
Jesse Owens shows up Hitler
Muhammad Ali takes a stand against a war he doesn't believe in
Ben Johnson scandal shines light on steroid abuse
Israeli athletes killed at Olympics
Yardage totals and hitting streaks are simply not "history".
and somehow the '72 Summit Series doesn't make the list... for shame....
Other than that i can think of a few others:
The first olympics
and... well your list was pretty good... hehe...
most of mine would be olympic related (ie the boycotted ones)
the first and second World Cups...
other than that, its too late for me to be thinking... lol
I thought about that one, but struggled to come up with any true historical significance. I don’t think “people really enjoyed it” or “everyone was watching” necessarily counts. There are some who talk like that series helped forge our young nation. I might argue that Vimy Ridge better matches that description.
But feel free to disagree. The list wasn’t intended to be comprehensive.
I think the Summit series was definitely a part of the overall Cold War, and the series itself was a microcosm of the Cold War. Having read Esposito's autobiography and a few other players' accounts of what it was like both playing the Soviets and playing in the USSR, I think there was definitely some social significance to it. Imagine the incredible despair if Canada had lost the series - and not just because it was hockey, but because it was West vs. East in an ideological way.
Others:
*The Ali-Foreman fight in Africa was absolutely HUGE. Especially for the people of Africa.
*The massacre of students in Mexico prior to the Olympics.
*The American sprinters at those same Olympics giving a black power salute on the podium, and wearing no socks or shoes to protest poverty conditions.
Heck, I could go on with thus stuff for most of the day. There's a great writer by the name of Dave Zirin who writes on just this subject. Great book called "What's My Name, Fool?" I suggest that anyone interested should read it.
Its not sports, but since somebody mentioned Vimy Ridge as a turning point in History, I want to bring up Hong Kong in 1941, and how a Brigade of young, half trained Canadian boys went out there and stuck it out to the very last...even the commanding General "finished" by picking up a revolver and saying into the radio that "I am going outside to shoot it out"...
I was priviledged to know some of the few survivours, and personally believe it an example of what Canucks can "do" when forced to literally eating grass, like Nebacannezer...followed by 3.5 years of the worst "captivity" ever thought of, abandonment by the Cdn government and people, lack of apology or compensation by Japan...these guys are really HERO's, aside from the vobvious ones like Sgt Major Osbourne, who fought his company after the officers were gone, and pitched grenades back until he had to "cover" one himself...(a VC posthumously) but I'm hoping that Canada doesn't "forget men like this, either...
