80-year-old Alan Richard Michaels is presently an American Sportscaster for Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video. There’s nothing in his five decades of life that he hasn’t achieved. Whether it was play-by-play commenting for football, baseball, basketball, boxing, horse racing, or ice hockey, one such portion of his play-by-play sports commenting career stood out: the Miracle On Ice!
It was an ice hockey game between the United States and the Soviet Union and the second ice hockey game that Sportscaster Al Michaels ever called (after Japan's Sapporo 1970 Winter Olympic Games).
Michaels shared that he wasn’t disappointed when he got ice hockey because when one's doing winter sports, it’s better to be inside than outside. It was the most iconic moment of Al Michaels’ sportscasting career, he shared nothing will ever beat that.
It was the 45th anniversary of the ‘Miracle On Ice’ and Al Michaels was called on The Rich Eisen Show to share the epic moment when he called “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”


Al Michaels shared about the competitive teams in the 1980 Winter Olympics. He said, “Finland was so going into the tournament. Soviets, obviously number one. Czechoslovakia, clear number two. Then you had Sweden. And, remember we had to go the final 30 seasons to wind up tying them on Bill Baker’s gold, that was gigantic. West Germany was pretty good as well. So we (US) were a team that looked like maybe with some luck we could win the Bronze - maybe.”
“It was a dream come true moment right? A moment like this on a broadcast like that,” said Rich Eisen talking about the win of the US over Russia in the ice hockey game of the 1980 Winter Olympics
“Can you imagine in this day and age?” asked Rich Eisen.
Al Michaels replied, “It couldn’t happen, of course not. Within a second and a half, TikTok has it, X has it, or whatever it is that has it. Everybody’s got it. In those years, we were working with an orange juice can and a string right. It’s a different animal.”

Announcer for the Miracle On Ice US Hockey’s win over Russia in the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, Al Michaels shared about the miraculous event when he said, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
Al Michaels poured his heart out and shared, “You know so many moments you remember if you’re old enough - Pearl Harbour, Kennedy’s assassination, Challenger blowing up in 1986, 9/11- obviously, you remember where you were - they’re all terrible moments, this (Miracle On Ice) was a beautiful moment.”

Al Michaels continued, “I did that (iconic call) solely because it was a sports miracle. We couldn’t win the game and we won the game under the circumstances. The word in my mind was ‘miraculous’ but it got morphed into a question and answer, and away we went. I had no idea when I said those words. I didn’t know they would have the resonation that they’ve had through the years.
But you get lucky, and I really got lucky that the right words came at the right time. I was a horse with blinkers, straight ahead - call the game. And when Puck came out the center ice with 5 seconds to go, it enabled me to have that word 'miraculous' come into my head, do a question and answer which I’d never done before on the air, and off it went - Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
Later on, a movie was made called, 'Miracle On Ice'. It was an American sports docudrama released in 1981.
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