Sometimes the videos YouTube suggests for you hold great surprises.
That’s exactly what happened late one evening while I was catching up on work, and had YouTube streaming on the television. I let a suggested video pop up, and it turned out to be Here’s Peggy Fleming, the Olympic gold medalist’s 1968 award-winning NBC special.
I had never seen the special – it aired 14 years before I was born and had no way to see it before it was uploaded to YouTube. I wish this wasn’t my first introduction to it, because it includes a fun mash-up of two of my favorite sports – hockey and figure skating.
Filmed at The Forum in Inglewood, California, the segment includes the Southern California-bred Fleming having to share the ice with the then very new Los Angeles Kings, and the chaos it creates. The embedded video below goes exactly to the segment’s starting point.
It’s beautifully shot and impeccably directed. The whole special ended up winning a bunch of awards, and this quick scene shows why. Anyone who likes retro hockey or figure skating will find this a treat.