On most days, this country can’t agree on the correct temperature for the office thermostat, much less on politics, parenting styles, or whether pineapple is an acceptable pizza topping. We are divided by cable news, comment sections, and the eternal question of who took the last cup of coffee and didn’t start a new pot. But every once in a while, sports swoop in like a Zamboni smoothing over the rough ice of our collective nerves.
The Olympics have a special knack for this, and this year’s Winter version hasn’t disappointed.
Maybe it’s the flags. Maybe it’s the anthem. Maybe it’s the fact that curling somehow became appointment television. Whatever the reason, the Games turn strangers into teammates and coworkers into temporary patriots who suddenly know the rules of sports they have ignored for the last four years.
This was especially true on that golden day when the United States women’s national ice hockey team faced their eternal, frostiest rival, the Canada women’s national ice hockey team. It didn’t matter where you were.
Bars that normally argued about football point spreads fell silent. Living rooms filled with people who claimed they “don’t really watch hockey” but were now standing, shouting, and explaining icing rules with confidence. Offices became productivity-free zones, with one person pretending to work while everyone else hovered around a screen the size of a legal pad.
The game itself was everything sports promises to be and rarely delivers — fast, tense, dramatic, and decided in a way that made grown adults hug strangers. When the USA finally prevailed, you could hear a collective exhale from coast to coast. For a brief, shining moment, nobody cared who you voted for or what your yard sign said. You were American. You liked hockey. You hated Canada — politely, of course, and only for the duration of the broadcast.
Then, as if the sports gods wanted to make a point, figure skating took center ice. Enter Alysa Liu, gliding, spinning, and defying gravity with the calm confidence of someone who didn’t get the memo about how nerve-wracking Olympic moments are supposed to be. When she earned her medal — the kind of performance that felt like gold, regardless of the metal — you could sense something deeper happening. It had been more than two decades since American women had stood on the top step in this sport, and suddenly the future looked bright, young, and fearless.
Sports do that. They lift us. They inspire us. They motivate us to believe, even briefly, that hard work pays off and that miracles are possible if you just keep skating toward the judges and hope for the best. They remind us what unity feels like. Not the forced kind, but the spontaneous kind that erupts when a puck hits the net or a skater sticks the landing.
Of course, the spell never lasts. By the next morning, we were back to arguing about the thermostat and the coffee pot. Canada returned to being a lovely country full of nice people we don’t actually hate. Figure skating returned to the realm of “I’ll watch again in four years.” But something lingered.
Because for one day — one glorious, chilly, Olympic day — sports reminded us that we can still cheer together, celebrate together, and believe together. And in a divided world, that might be the most valuable gold medal of all.
My View From the cheap seats 