These games have been for ever tainted by the massacre of Israeli athletes by
Arab terrorists. I pray that such an atrocity will never mar the games
again. At the time and since, I marvel at the dignified behaviour of the
Israelis. No-one really knew whether the games should continue.
Perhaps the deciding logic was that those who died would have wished the
Olympics to carry on rather than be aborted.
On a bright note Olga Korbut entranced us by her gymnastic interpretations.
Perhaps there have been better pure gymnastics, but she was a breath of fresh
air and captured our hearts. There is often a saying that such and such
cricket or baseball star could clear a bar by making everyone go out and watch
their performance;
well Olga Korbut had that star quality, you wanted to see her even if you were
not a regular fan of gymnastics.
One star to immerge from the water was Mark Spitz. Perhaps the
greatest testament to his ability is that every new great swimmer is touted as
the 'New Mark Spitz'. His record of 7 gold medals at one Olympic games stood
until Michael Phelps won 8 in Beijing.
Apart from Mark Spitz, the American invincibility was shattered. It
reminded me of a gambler's
loosing streak when you cannot find a winner no
matter what you do, flat horses fall in the straight, stewards disqualify your
winners, your horse turns out to have been doped; American athletes found these
and even more bizarre ways of losing.
Firstly two American's
mistook the time of the 2nd round heat of the 100m so miss the
race and are out of the competition. The pole vaulters suffer because of a
rule change in the specification of their poles. Jim Ryan the great hope
for the 1500m fell. But the biggest fiasco was the American Basketball
that somehow lost to the USSR by a miracle basket in the last second.
While the legality of that last basket is challenged to this day, if you look at
the results sheet, the USSR still have the gold medals!
Even those who won managed to disgrace their country. Vincent
Matthews and Wayne Collett twirling their medals (gold and silver,
respectively) and joking with one another as "The Star-Spangled Banner" was
being played during the award ceremony. Their fellow countrymen were
outraged and they were banned from the Olympics for life.
Dave Wottle
"The Throttle", who won the 800m, failed to remove his golf cap at the
victory ceremony. Conspiratory theorists had a field day speculating
on what he was protesting about, but there was a much simpler explanation.
Wottle plain forgot to take off his cap.
Other Happier Events at Munich 1972
Lasse Virén of Finland won the 5,000 and 10,000m, he would win again in
Montreal 1976, but his lack of success in between would cause a deal of
speculation.
Handball (last held in 1936) and Archery (last held in 1920) returned as
Olympic sports, while badminton was a demonstration sport.
Incidentally, the Olympic mascot made its first appearance in the form of
'Waldi', he looks like a dachshund see right.
American Frank Shorter, who coincidentally was born in Munich, was
approaching the stadium when a German student Norbert Sudhaus, wearing a
track uniform, joined the race for the closing stages. Imagine the
home crowd roar has the German 'athlete' came into sight apparently leading
the race. Fortunately not all the officials were taken-in and they
corralled the imposter and frog-marched him off the track.
Suddenly, the natives turned hostile and started booing. Now
Frank Shorter was somewhat miffed as he thought that an unsportsmanlike
crowd was catcalling him. Rarely has an Olympic Marathon winner
had such a disappointing reception. As a matter of trivia, this was the
third time in Olympic history that an American had won the marathon, but
in none of those races did the winner enter the stadium first.
Footnote Please send us your interesting facts
and trivia for the Munich 1972 Olympic games.
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