'Miracle on Ice' captain says he regrets wearing Trump hat at Vegas rally

Hockey captain says he was invited to a private picture line, but ended up on stage

The captain of the US hockey team that stunned the world by winning the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid has now said he regrets wearing a red Keep America Great Again hat at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas last week.

Mike Eruzione, the captain of the so-called ‘Miracle on Ice’ team that beat out the Soviet Union four decades ago, said that he and his fellow teammates have been getting beat up since standing behind the president with those polarising hats.

“We’re getting killed,” Eruzione told the Washington Post of the backlash.

“If we knew we were going to piss off this many people, we probably would not have put the hats on,” he said. “That’s the big question here. A lot of the stuff I got was, ‘You guys said it’s not political, but when you put the hats on, you made it political.’”

Eruzione and 13 of his former teammates attended the Las Vegas rally of Mr Trump’s on Friday, marking the 40th anniversary of that historic victory that set the team on the path to win the gold medal that year.

The game has been voted the greatest sporting moment of the 20th century.

Eruzione said that he and his fellow players were in Las Vegas for promotional reasons, and that they had attended the event after being invited to a private photo line with the president.

But instead, they were invited on stage alongside Mr Trump.

“I just put it on,” Eruzione told the Washington DC newspaper of the hat. “I wasn’t thinking. Maybe this shows I’m naive, shows I’m stupid. I don’t know.”