1960 Squaw Valley Winter Games
648 Athletes, 30 Countries, 27 Events

Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 'Miracle on Ice' US Men's Ice Hockey team, was the last player cut by coach Jack Riley (Dartmouth, 1944) from the 1960 Olympic team. Riley would coach his own miracle at Squaw Valley, with four Harvard alums on his squad. Robert B. Cleary (1958), William J. Cleary, Jr. (1956), Robert P. McVey (1958), and Robert E. Owen (1958), as well as Riley, were integral parts of the first U.S. Olympic ice hockey gold medal.

Both Bill and Bob Cleary were added to the team right before the Olympics, placing Brooks among those cut. Many players already on the team were upset with their addition, but Cleary was the top point-scorer on the team with six goals and six assists. The Cleary brothers and McVey (the biggest man on the team) formed one line, proving to be fruitful on many occasions, like the semifinal battle with the Soviet Union where Bob passed to Bill for the game's first goal. The United States beat the Soviet Union, in dramatic fashion like Brooks would twenty years later, and would eventually beat Czechoslovakia for the gold medal. But during the intermission after two periods, the U.S. team was down 4-3. At that time, rather famously, the captain of the Soviets, Nikolai Sologubov, paid a visit to his American friends. Unable to speak English, he still managed to deliver his message, the Americans should take oxygen to reinvigorate themselves at this high altitude. The act was hailed as an ultimate show of sportsmanship, but Sologubov had vested interests. Since the American team won, the USSR was awarded the bronze medal; it would not have won a medal had the Czechs won.

On the slopes, two skiers came westward from Hanover: Thomas A. Corcoran (1954) and Chiharu 'Chick' Igaya (1957). Corcoran placed ninth in the slalom event, a race which is believed to be the origin of instant replay when CBS producers were asked for a tape of the race by officials, to settle an argument. He did much better in the giant slalom event, but was six-tenths of a second from the third-place finisher. Corcoran's fourth-place finish was the best by an American man until Bode Miller's second-place finish in 2002. After his skiing career, Corcoran worked hard to turn 500 acres of land in New Hampshire's Waterville Valley into the resort town it is today.

Harvard continued its figure skating tradition, with Dudley S. Richards (1954) placing 10th in the pairs' competition. On another note, the daughters of Olympic medal-winning figure skater Maribel Y. Vinson (Harvard, 1933) both competed at Squaw Valley, a year before they, along with their mother and the entire 1961 US Figure Skating team, would tragically die in a plane crash en route to the World Championships.

Name	School	Sport
Thomas A. Corcoran	Dartmouth College	Men's Alpine Skiing
Chiharu 'Chick' Igaya	Dartmouth College	Men's Alpine Skiing
Robert B. Cleary	Harvard University	Men's Ice Hockey
William J. Cleary, Jr.	Harvard University	Men's Ice Hockey
Robert P. McVey	Harvard University	Men's Ice Hockey
George E. Owen, Jr.	Harvard University	Men's Ice Hockey
Robert E. Owen	Harvard University	Men's Ice Hockey
Dudley S. Richards	Harvard University	Men's Figure Skating