Exceptionally rare gold winner’s medal issued for "Ice Hockey" at the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics. Gilt silver, 69 mm, 198 gm, designed by Peter Friedrich and struck by Jostens. The front depicts combined profiles of a laureated athlete and a First Nations indigenous person whose headdress is formed by winter sporting equipment; the reverse bears the stylized snowflake/maple leaf emblem of the Games and the Olympic rings at center, with surrounding raised bilingual text: "XVes Jeux Olympiques d'hiver, XV Olympic Games, Calgary 1988.” The edge of the medal is engraved in English and French with the name of the event: “Ice Hockey.” The medal, which bears some wear to the rim and edges, is suspended from its cyan, red, and blue ribbon.
Held between February 13th and 28th, the men's ice hockey tournament of the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics was won by the Soviet Union team, their second straight Olympic gold and their seventh overall since the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, which marked the Soviet Union’s winter Olympiad debut.
The consignor notes that this gold medal derives from the personal collection of legendary Soviet defenseman Sergei Starikov, who won nine national titles and participated in three Olympic tournaments, winning gold in Sarajevo and Calgary and silver in Lake Placid—all three of Starikov’s medals are being offered in this auction. Starikov would appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he became one of the first Soviet players to wear an NHL uniform when he joined the New Jersey Devils in 1989, along with his friend and defensive partner from the Soviet team, Viacheslav Fetisov.
