Hey, everyone, Fitz here.

For the next few weeks, we're going to dig into a few stories out of the archives

before we dive into all new episodes coming later.

We've just finished up in Paris.

It was incredible.

And on display was Team USA.

This highly orchestrated, so much effort goes into it, so many different people working towards it.

It's this really sophisticated, cool thing.

This is the second time we cover the Olympics.

The first time back in Tokyo, Team USA was billed as the first, right?

The first time this had ever happened.

And it actually turned out that during our reporting, we discovered that

that wasn't true. Thirty years earlier, the first Team USA set out past the Iron Curtain to compete.

The story starts in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan is in the midst of a thermonuclear arms race

against the USSR, known as Star Wars. In mainstream media, Russia is

firmly cast as the villain, think Red Dawn, Ivan Drago against Rocky. In sports, the 1980

Miracle on Ice was still front and center, and in the 1980s summer games in Moscow, the U.S.

boycotted. In mainstream culture, the Soviet Union was not a

place you visited lightly. But at that time, climbing was decidedly not mainstream. Alex and I talked

with Beth Wald and Russ Klune, members of the original, slightly more scrappy Team USA. In 1986,

four climbers, Beth, Russ, Dan Michael,

and the legendary Todd Skinner crossed over the Iron Curtain to compete in a one-of-a-kind speed climbing competition. The story starts in 1983 in Waco, Tanks, Texas. Let's dive in. This is

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