My intro...
The pomp and extravagance of the opening ceremony at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games cleanly covered one of the most bitter political battles ever fought by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)-and one of its most disastrous defeats. An international controversy that nearly derailed the Games only days before the opening, coupled with a threatened boycott from an entire continent, and finally a 36-31-3 vote revoking a member team’s invitation had embarrassed the IOC and dampened the integrity and nonpartisanship of the worldwide sporting event.
The 1972 Munich Games were the largest yet, with over 7,000 athletes from 121 nations. To a casual observer, the ceremony was cause for celebration, for the gap between Puerto Rico and Romania was no larger than those between each of the other teams. At least one man must have noticed the gap, however; Avery Brundage, the 20-year president of the IOC, had wagered his career on the presence of white-ruled Rhodesia in the Olympic Games. He lost the debate, and then he lost his presidency.
One athlete at the Munich Games recalled the opening ceremonies and Rhodesia’s absence: “Perhaps if we had all attended opening ceremonies yearly and Rhodesia had been there each time before, we might now have felt incompletion, dismay, even anger,” he later wrote. But following Rhodesia’s 1965 declaration of independence from Great Britain and its resulting conversion to a brutal police state under the rule of a tiny white minority, it had only sent a team to one Olympic Games, at Mexico City in 1968. The Mexican Government, in cooperating with United Nations mandatory sanctions, refused to accept Rhodesian passports, forcing Rhodesia to withdraw.
It was an inglorious road the IOC had traversed before. Apartheid South Africa, a participant in the Olympics for over 50 years, was finally temporarily suspended from the 1964 Tokyo Games and officially expelled in 1970. But unlike South Africa, Rhodesia had not violated the Olympic Charter or the decisions of the IOC; it had no legal challenges brought against it; it had not taunted the IOC with empty promises; and most importantly, its championships, athletic facilities, and Olympic team were not segregated.
Rhodesia had been forcibly expelled solely for narrow political considerations-the only Olympic team to have ever suffered that fate in the entire history of the modern Games.
The Olympic Games had never been immune from political considerations, a point dramatized by the actions of two African-American athletes on the medal stand in Mexico City, the horrific actions of Palestinian terrorists at Munich, and the near-collapse of the Montreal Games over Canada’s strong support of mainland China against the IOC’s steadfast allegiance to Taiwan. And yet, the Games still went on. The controversy over mixing politics and sports still continues in some form with each successive Olympic Games, and the question of whether human rights considerations have a place on the playing field is as pertinent now as ever.
The Olympic Movement is both a striking act of diplomacy among nations and a sacred contract of individual athletes to the ideals of sportsmanship and fraternity. The inevitable collision of these two prongs over many decades has produced controversy, crisis, and, at times, tragedy.
The 1972 Munich Games were the largest yet, with over 7,000 athletes from 121 nations. To a casual observer, the ceremony was cause for celebration, for the gap between Puerto Rico and Romania was no larger than those between each of the other teams. At least one man must have noticed the gap, however; Avery Brundage, the 20-year president of the IOC, had wagered his career on the presence of white-ruled Rhodesia in the Olympic Games. He lost the debate, and then he lost his presidency.
One athlete at the Munich Games recalled the opening ceremonies and Rhodesia’s absence: “Perhaps if we had all attended opening ceremonies yearly and Rhodesia had been there each time before, we might now have felt incompletion, dismay, even anger,” he later wrote. But following Rhodesia’s 1965 declaration of independence from Great Britain and its resulting conversion to a brutal police state under the rule of a tiny white minority, it had only sent a team to one Olympic Games, at Mexico City in 1968. The Mexican Government, in cooperating with United Nations mandatory sanctions, refused to accept Rhodesian passports, forcing Rhodesia to withdraw.
It was an inglorious road the IOC had traversed before. Apartheid South Africa, a participant in the Olympics for over 50 years, was finally temporarily suspended from the 1964 Tokyo Games and officially expelled in 1970. But unlike South Africa, Rhodesia had not violated the Olympic Charter or the decisions of the IOC; it had no legal challenges brought against it; it had not taunted the IOC with empty promises; and most importantly, its championships, athletic facilities, and Olympic team were not segregated.
Rhodesia had been forcibly expelled solely for narrow political considerations-the only Olympic team to have ever suffered that fate in the entire history of the modern Games.
The Olympic Games had never been immune from political considerations, a point dramatized by the actions of two African-American athletes on the medal stand in Mexico City, the horrific actions of Palestinian terrorists at Munich, and the near-collapse of the Montreal Games over Canada’s strong support of mainland China against the IOC’s steadfast allegiance to Taiwan. And yet, the Games still went on. The controversy over mixing politics and sports still continues in some form with each successive Olympic Games, and the question of whether human rights considerations have a place on the playing field is as pertinent now as ever.
The Olympic Movement is both a striking act of diplomacy among nations and a sacred contract of individual athletes to the ideals of sportsmanship and fraternity. The inevitable collision of these two prongs over many decades has produced controversy, crisis, and, at times, tragedy.