Olympic Silence

[akycha]

Forty years after 11 athletes were murdered in Munich, Israel still mourns alone.I was 11 years old and a fanatical sports fan. I could stay glued to the TV and radio for hours on end, rooting for my hometown teams. The pinnacle sporting event was the Olympics, providing not only a panoply of world-class athletics, but a once-in-four-year

Comments

[layweed]

Have there been other Olympians who have died during the games? Maybe a good compromise (tbh, don't think one is really necessary) would be to have a moment of silence to honor all Olympians who have died during the games, no matter what the cause.

[koken23]

Yes, this would work.

Most athletes who've died during the course of the Games have been Winter Olympians rather than Summer Olympians - for example in Vancouver there was a Georgian luge competitor who crashed and died during his qualifying heat - but it's certainly not unheard of for athletes to die at the Summer Games, and in any case...the Olympics are still the Olympics regardless of which set of events occurs.

If putting something aside for the Israeli team in particular would be politicising it too much - which I can sort of understand, it'd get messy very quickly if teams boycotted the memorial because they don't like Israel - then acknowledge them all and leave room for these eleven also.