It is the four-year ritual for Al Michaels. When the Winter Olympics rolls around, he repeatedly gets asked about his legendary “Do you believe in miracles?” call which punctuated the United States’ legendary victory over Russia.

Michaels is quick to point out that 34 years have passed since the 1980 Olympics.

“If you’re under 40, you don’t remember it,” Michaels said.

The call, though, remains vibrant to the next generation thanks to the movie, Miracle, starring Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks.

“I can’t tell you how many youth coaches tell me they show that movie at the beginning of the season,” Michaels said. “The movie has given it a different life.”

However, here’s the kicker: Michaels’ famous call almost didn’t make it into the movie. I’ll let Michaels take it from here:

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The director (Gavin O’Connor), a terrific guy, asked me to be part of the movie. I remember the executives at Disney wanted to make it into a love story. Thankfully, Gavin got them back on track.

I said, ‘Gavin, here’s the deal. Whatever I do, I’m going to do it as closely as I would have done (if he was calling it live). Nobody’s going to write this for me. I’ll be happy to connect the dots and put in the context.’

I said I wouldn’t re-do the last 30 seconds (of the U.S.-Russia game). That was a non-starter for me.

Well, there was this sound guy. He was over-the-top, really over-bearing. He was crazy that I wouldn’t do the last 30 seconds. The original audio sounded muddy. He wanted me to re-do what I actually said, but he’s got violins coming in. He’s doing it as the artist.

I said, no. I told Gavin, ‘You’re going to have to live with this.’

The sound guy was pissed off. During the last 30 seconds, he puts the music in so loud that he drowns me out.

Now this is before the movie comes out. My wife and I are at a private screening with (Disney heads) Michael Eisner and Bob Iger. They play the movie, and the lights come up. Eisner says to me, ‘Where’s the line?’ I explain to him what happened. He gets on the phone and says, ‘Tell Gavin I want to hear Al’s call.’

If not for Eisner, I would have been drowned out. The whole thing really was an instructive piece about the business and egos.

NBC is doing a documentary on the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding affair. It is scheduled to air on Sunday, although it could be sooner depending on what happens with the weather at the Olympics. In an interview with Mary Carillo, Kerrigan talks for the first time about the infamous whack to the knee.

You will notice footage of the infamous incident contains the Intersport logo. Here’s why. Intersport’s Gene Samuels was the only cameraman to record the historical scene below. Intersport president Charlie Besser continues to cash in on the copyrighted footage, especially this year with the 20th anniversary retrospectives. He contends the dramatic video helped lift the story to a level never seen before or since.

Besser: We were doing a live one-hour TV special previewing the OIympics. We approached Campbell’s. Their spokesperson was Nancy Kerrigan. They were interested in being a sponsor if we would do a piece on Nancy. We would tell the story of her rise. We were at Skate America in Detroit. During a practice session, (Samuels) is shooting B-roll of Nancy. Nobody else was there.

She comes off the ice and puts her skate guards on, and Gene turns off the camera. Then Gene hears the scream. He turns on the camera. The first thing he sees is her down on the ground, going ‘Why, why?’ He points the camera up and catches the two assailants running down the hall.

The police asked for the video. We had enough experience to know when you turn over video to the police, it doesn’t always stay there. The first thing we did was encode the Intersport logo into the footage. We wanted to protect it.

Would the story have been as big without the video?

Besser: I don’t think so. Everyone was able to see physical evidence of the actual attack as opposed to conjuring up something in your mind. People saw Nancy’s father carrying her away from there. There were very dramatic images. There was sound and motion to what happened. It became much more real.

Perhaps the founders of a new site haven’t heard. Negative sells on the Internet. Just look at my pals at Deadspin.

Thrive Sports, though, is looking to buck the trend. It is banking that there is a market for–get this–inspirational, positive stories.

Thrive Sports focuses on telling the stories of athletes who participate in amateur and Olympics-style sports. The Minneapolis-based site has been going hard on the games in Sochi with behind-the-scene tales and videos on the participants and their families.

Several stories were done by Dylan Brown, the brother of figure skater Jason Brown and my son’s good friend. Dylan wrote, “Before he was a high level skater, he was already an incredible brother and person.”

Judging by the quality of the site and an initial advertising push, Thrive Sports has some money behind it. One of its owners is Jeff Nesbit, a former director of communications for the vice-president’s office at the White House and co-creator of the Science of the Winter Olympics and the Science of NFL Football video series with NBC Sports that won the 2010 Sports Emmy for best original sports programming.

Sean Jensen serves as the managing editor. In a Q/A, he discussed the approach and goals for Thrive Sports.

What is the concept behind Thrive Sports?

Thrive Sports is a media hub built to connect sports fans, athletes, and world-class sports organizations from around the world. We aim to originate and curate pieces that engage and inspire sports fans through pictures, stories and videos. We want to provide avid fans of less mainstream sports a forum to share and connect – while also bringing something fresh to the stories that are already getting attention.

Why did the site decide to concentrate on amateur sports? What makes you think there will be enough interest in amateur sports to sustain the site?

Thrive Sports has chosen to focus on amateur and Olympic style sports to provide a unique platform for athletes and international sports organizations that typically only receive attention once every few years. We want to become the go-to site where fans, athletes and coaches of sports that don’t get year-round attention can connect to stay on top of relevant news and feature stories. New sports and athletic trends are constantly cropping up, with a passionate base of fans, and we desire to identify those and shine a national and international spotlight on them.

Can positive sell?

Different strokes for different folks; there’s plenty of websites that serve different audiences. Everyone is looking for an edge in life, to benefit them personally, professionally or recreationally. We are in the business of inspiration, and we are encouraged by the success of a site such as Upworthy.com, which proves the world is responding to weighty topics presented with an inspirational tone. We’ll address the wins and losses, the triumphs and challenges, but we’ll always aim to do so in a respectful way, not gloating, boasting or judging others.

What kind partnerships have you been able to do with athletes thus far?

Through a campaign with LockerDome called #ThriveRingsTrue, launched in the lead up to the Sochi Games, we partnered with Olympic athletes such as Ted Ligety, Gus Kenworthy, Brita Sigourney, Hilary Knight, Monique and Jocelyne Lamoureux and Jess Vetter. We also partnered with other notable athletes such as Maddy Schaffrick, Kristi Leskinen, Gretchen Bleiler, Simon Dumont, Tara Lipinski and Sasha Cohen.

Three of those athletes are represented by Chicago Sports and Entertainment Partners, which represents a number of other Olympic athletes, including silver medalist Noelle Pikus-Pace.

We’ve also landed exclusive interviews with Tony Dungy, Jason Brown, Aja Evans, Bob Costas and countless others.

How important is the video component to the site?

Essential to what we do.

Our team produced over 50 videos for #ThriveRingsTrue. Currently, our site’s content is about 85% written and 15% video. We have working relationships with production teams across the country to provide a platform that features the best in sports programming, films and regional shows.

We are already in the process of creating original programming.

What has been the reaction to the Olympics? What will be your initial focus in the upcoming months?

These days, analytics tell you pretty quickly whether you’re on the right track or not, and our numbers have surpassed our early projections. We are already ranked in the top 100K sites, according to Quantcast. Our Facebook posts have reached over 4 million users; the LockerDome partnership has delivered our content to its 20 million monthly users and our videos are racking up tens of thousands of page views. For a site that just launched Jan. 6, we think those are very good indications that we are on to something.

In terms of what our focus will be in the coming months, after the Games, it will mirror what we’ve been doing since the numbers have validated that approach. For example, before the Olympics, we published what was the first significant profile of Chloe Kim, the 13-year-old snowboarder from California who has landed on the podium of several major events, including the X Games, but was too young to compete in Sochi. The story also included exclusive interviews with her father and her coach.

We landed the first domestic interview with Tracy Barnes, who gave up her spot on the U.S. Biathlon team to her twin sister Lanny, who had fallen ill during the qualification process.

Our writers landed interviews with athletes such as Jason Brown, Sugar Todd, John Daly, Kelly Clark and Zach Parise and shared their personal stories.

We provided the full, behind the scenes account of “Go Ligety,” the popular commercial by J.C. Penney built around Ted Ligety and C-Black of Blackstreet.

All of those stories were shared on social media and on other websites.

During the Games, we shared video of luger Kate Hansen’s pre-race dance and behind the scenes pictures of Noelle Pikus-Pace, from winning a silver medal in the skeleton to celebrating with her family, conducting interviews and even appearing in-studio with NBC. Columnist Jon Saraceno scored lengthy interviews with Bob Costas and Sage Kotsenburg’s father, who didn’t make the trip to Sochi.

We think all that shows how deeply we are already entrenched in the world of amateur sports. And we are really just getting started in our networking. Not all upstart media platforms can deliver that level of access in its infancy.

While at the Chicago Sun-Times, I was able to write significant features and profiles on a number of notable athletes, visiting the current or childhood homes of Derrick Rose, Jay Cutler, Charles Tillman and Brian Urlacher, among others. I have a passion for storytelling, and I am confident Thrive Sports can develop the relationships necessary to continue to find and tell the amazing stories.

We all know there’s no shortage of them out there.