02 Apr An Historical Moment That You Can Relive: The Nagano Tapes

At 29 years old, there are a lot of events that I witness that I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when the news broke. I was in a Political Science when the USA inaugurated the first black president, Obama, in 2008.  That being said, there was an event that EVERY Czech remember what they were doing at that moment that I witnessed but unfortunately, I was too young to understand it until last week. I was invited by VocalNYC to assist to the exclusive premiere of Five Rings Films: The Nagano Tapes. It is an Olympic Channel movie that showcases the road to the gold medal of the Czech Republic Hockey Team win in the Nagano Olympics.

It all happened in 1998, in Japan, 61 athletes were entering the Olympics for the first time for the Czech Republic. In fact, Czech Republic became its own country in 1993 after the split with Slovenia. Led by one of the greatest goalies of all time Dominik Hasek, the Czech hockey team surely didn’t expect to leave their mark in history!

Fun fact, as a kid I was a major hockey fan and I remember mimicking Dominik Hasek unique style of goaltending when playing hockey cosom with my friends in grade 3.

The Nagano Olympics was the first Olympics to accept National Hockey League players to be part of the rosters. From the NHL, the Czechs had few players that are considered “legends” today such as Jaromir Jagr, Jaroslav Spacek and Dominik Hasek as mentioned above. However, the Canadian and the American teams were the highly favored team because they had players such as Wayne Gretzky, Eric Lindros, Patrick Roy and Brett Hull, Mike Modano and Chris Chelios respectively.

The Czechs didn’t have it easy and the Nagano Tapes brings you in the universe of that victory. It features interviews with many key actors from Nagano Olympics such as Jaromir Jagr, Eric Lindros, Dominik Hasek and more.

This documentary shows you the behind the scenes and the real story of many players that had a key impact in this iconic event. On paper, there was no way that the Czech would win they didn’t let their fans and citizens down by beating the United States in quarter-final, Canada in the semi-final ( in a shootout) to end the tournament facing Russia! This win was a symbol of rebirth, a symbol of power!

The VIP Screening was such a great event where not only  I was able to watch the movie on the big screen, but it was followed by a panel discussion with Peter Svoboda, former pro ice hockey player on Team Czech; Michael Farber, Olympics journalist from Sports Illustrated; Mark Parkman, Olympic Channel’s General Manager; Jon Weinbach, the Executive Producer and Executive VP of Mandalay Sports Media and Sundance award-winning director Ondrej Hudecek. During the panel, you could feel the emotions of Peter Svoboda who played for the Montreal Canadians, Buffalo Sabres, Philadelphia Flyers and Tampa Bay Lightning. He was the player that scored the ONLY goal in the gold medal game against Russia in 1998. To have him there during the VIP Screening was an honor.
Luckily, you have access to watch this movie for free HERE!