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MARCH 2020 USAHOCKEYMAGAZINE.COM // 19 B ILL CLEARY'S LIFE is a treasure trove of hockey memories, but one may stand out above all the rest. It was Christmas 1984 when Cleary brought his Harvard University team behind the Iron Curtain to play a series of exhibition games in what was then known as Czechoslovakia. During the tour Cleary received word that for- mer Czech national team goalie Dmitri Vorachev was eager to see him despite being in failing health. As the team pulled into the town of Kolin for the second-to-last game of the tour, Cleary stepped off the bus and there was Vorachev, looking older and withered, waiting in the cold. The former Olympic competitors greeted one another as old friends as Vorachev went through the roster of that gold-medal winning team from 1960, asking about each member, what they were doing now, what their families were like and if they were still involved in hockey. Soon it was time for that evening 's contest, and Vorachev walked out onto the ice to address the crowd. "I want to welcome my good friend from the United States," he said. "We haven't seen each other in almost 25 years. We competed against each other in the Olympics. And even though our countries aren't friendly, we are friends, we are sportsmen and we are Olympians." "It was unbelievable. I was getting choked up," recalls Cleary, who was brought out on the ice and given the coat of arms to the city. "After the game was over, we talked some more. It was like he didn't want me to leave." The following night was the tour finale, and Cleary was recounting his visit with Vorachev when his interpreter stepped in to deliver some bad news. Vorachev had died that morning. "It was almost like he waited to see me. Not me, but what I repre- sented. It was the eeriest thing that ever happened to me," Cleary says. "But that's what the Olympics are all about. I think that says it all." * * * Few things bring Cleary 's blood to a boil like the talk of profes- sional players competing in the Olympics. "I haven't changed my feeling on it. I'm dead set against the pros playing in the Olympics," says the two-time Olympian who also won a silver medal in 1956 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, and gold four years later in Squaw Valley, Calif. " We did alright as amateurs. I've got a gold and a silver medal at home. What do the pros have? They may have a couple of silvers but they don't have any gold." To make his case, Cleary points to photos from two Olympic eras wrapped by a common symbol. In a simpler time, there stood Jim Craig, one of the many heroes from that 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that staged the "Miracle on Ice" in Lake Placid, N.Y., wrapped in the Stars and Stripes as he searched the frenzied crowd for his father. In a distant arena separated by time, space and ideals, stood members of basketball's Dream Team, who used the American flag to cover up the logo of a conflicting sponsor on their warm-up suits after winning g o l d a t t h e 1 9 92 B a r c e l o n a Summer Olympic Games. In the eyes of Cleary, those images speak volumes about what the Olympics were about, and what they have become. "It's about money and not about sport. And that's why I'm against it and I'll never change," he says. "People think I'm old fashioned, and I am. I make no apologies for that." * * * Ben Smith has heard Cleary rail against the proposition of pros competing in the Olympics for the better part of 30 years. And he has a rebuttal for his dear friend. "We've had some great arguments because I always throw it right back in his face," Smith laughs. "I say, 'Hey, Billy, who was the best hockey player in America in 1960? It was you, hands down. So why shouldn't the best player in America get to play in the Olympics today? Why shouldn't Patrick Kane get the chance to represent his country?'" Smith was just a youngster when his father took him to see Cleary play for Harvard in the early 1950s. Through his innocent eyes, Smith could see that Cleary was in a class by himself, the way he saw the ice, the way he stickhandled as if the puck was tied to his stick like a yo-yo, and the way he could shoot it with a flick of his magic wrists. "He was the type of guy where as a kid you might go see a Roy Rogers movie on a Saturday afternoon and come out of the theater looking for a horse to ride," Smith says using one of his many movie analogies. "When you saw Billy Cleary play, you wanted to come out of the rink and find a pond and try to do what he did. "He was just so far above the competition level that you didn't have to have a discerning eye to know that guy was different." * * * Bill Cleary Holds Close To The Time Tested Beliefs That Carried Him To The Top Of The Game Billy Cleary was an integral member of two U.S. Olympic Teams that shocked the hockey world by bringing home two medals, a silver in 1956 in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, and a gold four years later in Squaw Valley, Calif.