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1972 Summer Olympics

Games of the XX Olympiad
Host city Munich, West Germany
Motto 'The Happy Games'
Nations participating 121
Athletes participating 7,134 (6,075 men, 1,059 women)
Events 195 in 21 sports
Opening ceremony August 26
Closing ceremony September 10
Officially opened by President Gustav Heinemann
Athlete's Oath Heidi Schüller
Judge's Oath Heinz Pollay
Olympic Torch Günther Zahn
Stadium Olympic Stadium

The 1972 Summer Olympics (German: Olympische Sommerspiele 1972), officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972. The sporting nature of the event was largely overshadowed by the Munich massacre in which eleven Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German police officer were killed. Five Black September Palestinian terrorists died.

The 1972 Summer Olympics were the second Summer Olympics to be held in Germany, after the 1936 Games in Berlin, which had taken place under the Nazi regime. Mindful of the connection, the West German Government was eager to take the opportunity of the Munich Olympics to present a new, democratic and optimistic Germany to the world, as shown by the Games' official motto, "Die Heiteren Spiele",[1] or "the cheerful Games".[2] The logo of the Games was a blue solar logo (the "Bright Sun") by Otl Aicher, the designer and director of the visual conception commission.[3] The Olympic mascot, the dachshund "Waldi", was the first officially named Olympic mascot. The Olympic Fanfare[4] was composed by Herbert Rehbein, a companion of Bert Kaempfert.

The Olympic Park (Olympiapark) is based on Frei Otto's plans and after the Games became a Munich landmark. The competition sites, designed by architect Günther Behnisch, included the Olympic swimming hall, the Olympics Hall (Olympiahalle, a multipurpose facility) and the Olympic Stadium (Olympiastadion), and an Olympic village very close to the park. The design of the stadium was considered revolutionary, with sweeping canopies of acrylic glass stabilized by metal ropes, used on such a large scale for the first time.[5]

Contents

  • Host city selection 1
  • Munich massacre 2
  • Highlights 3
  • Venues 4
  • Medals awarded 5
    • Demonstration sports 5.1
  • Calendar 6
  • Medal count 7
  • Participating National Olympic Committees 8
  • See also 9
  • Notes 10
  • References and bibliography 11
  • External links 12

Host city selection

1972 Summer Olympics bidding results[6]
City Country Round 1 Round 2
Munich  West Germany 29 31
Madrid Spain 16 16
Montréal  Canada 6 13
Detroit  United States 6 —

Munich won its Olympic bid on April 26, 1966, at the 64th IOC Session at Rome, Italy, over bids presented by Detroit, Madrid, and Montréal. Montreal would eventually host the following Olympic games in 1976.[7]

Munich massacre

The Games were largely overshadowed by what has come to be known as the "Munich massacre". On September 5, a group of eight members of the Olympic Village and took nine Israeli athletes, coaches and officials hostage in their apartments. Two of the hostages who resisted were killed in the first moments of the break-in; the subsequent standoff in the Olympic Village lasted for almost 18 hours.

Late in the evening of September 5, the terrorists and their hostages were transferred by helicopter to the military airport of Fürstenfeldbruck, ostensibly to board a plane bound for an undetermined Arab country. The German authorities planned to ambush them there, but underestimated the numbers of their opposition and were thus undermanned. During a botched rescue attempt, all of the Israeli hostages were killed. Four of them were shot, then incinerated when one of the terrorists detonated a grenade inside the helicopter in which the hostages were sitting. The five remaining hostages were then machine-gunned to death.

All but three of the terrorists were killed as well. Although arrested and imprisoned pending trial, they were released by the West German government on October 29, 1972, in exchange for a hijacked Lufthansa jet. Two of those three were supposedly hunted down and assassinated later by the Mossad.[8] Jamal Al-Gashey, who is believed to be the sole survivor, is still living today in hiding in an unspecified African country with his wife and two children. The Olympic events were suspended several hours after the initial attack, but once the incident was concluded, Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee president, declared that "the Games must go on". A memorial ceremony was then held in the Olympic stadium, and the competitions resumed after a stoppage of 24 hours. The attack prompted heightened security at subsequent Olympics beginning with the 1976 Winter Olympics. Security at Olympics was heightened further beginning with the 2002 Winter Olympics, as they were the first to take place since September 11, 2001.

The massacre led the German federal government to re-examine its anti-terrorism policies, which at the time were dominated by a pacifist approach adopted after World War II. This led to the creation of the elite counter-terrorist unit GSG 9, similar to the British SAS. It also led Israel to launch an aggressive campaign known as Operation Wrath of God, in which those suspected of involvement were systematically tracked down and assassinated.

The events of the Munich massacre were chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary,

Venues of the 1972 Summer Olympics
Olympiapark
Greater Munich
Football venues
Handball venues
Other venues
Events at the 1972 Summer Olympics (Munich)
Summer Games
Olympic rings
Winter Games
Preceded by
Mexico City 		Summer Olympic Games
Munich
XX Olympiad (1972) 		Succeeded by
Montreal
  • The main theme of the 1972 Summer Olympics by Gunther Noris and the Big Band of Bundeswehr "Munich Fanfare March-Swinging Olympia Video on YouTube

External links

  • Schiller, Kay, and Christopher Young. The 1972 Munich Olympics and the Making of Modern Germany (University of California Press; 2010) 348 pages
  • Preuss, Holger. The Economics of Staging the Olympics: A Comparison of the Games, 1972–2008 (2006)
  • Oxlade, Chris, et al. Olympics. Rev. ed. London: DK, 2005. Print.

References and bibliography

  1. ^
  2. ^
  3. ^
  4. ^ Herbert Rehbein: Olympic Fanfare Munich 1972 (TV Intro)
  5. ^
  6. ^
  7. ^ IOC Vote History
  8. ^ Countering Terrorism: The Israeli Response To The 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre And The Development Of Independence Covert Action Teams, M.A. thesis by Alexander B. Calahan at Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 1995.
  9. ^
  10. ^
  11. ^
  12. ^
  13. ^
  14. ^ Munich 1972 Opening Ceremony on YouTube
  15. ^ "1972: Rhodesia out of Olympics", BBC
  16. ^ "Rhodesia expelled", Montreal Gazette, August 23, 1972

Notes

See also

Participating National Olympic Committees

Rhodesia's invitation to take part in the 1972 Summer Games was withdrawn by the International Olympic Committee four days before the opening ceremony, in response to African countries' protests against the Rhodesian government. (Rhodesia did, however, compete in the 1972 Summer Paralympics, held a little earlier in Heidelberg.)[15][16]

The Parade of Nations was organised according to the German alphabet, with the first country following Greece being Egypt, whilst East Germany was referred to as "DDR".[14]

Eleven nations made their first Olympic appearance in Munich: Albania, Dahomey (now Benin), Gabon, North Korea, Lesotho, Malawi, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Swaziland, Togo, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).

Number of competitors per nation.
Participants

Participating National Olympic Committees

  *   Host nation (West Germany)

Key
Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 Soviet Union 50 27 22 99
2 United States 33 31 30 94
3 East Germany 20 23 23 66
4 West Germany 13 11 16 40
5 Japan 13 8 8 29
6 Australia 8 7 2 17
7 Poland 7 5 9 21
8 Hungary 6 13 16 35
9 Bulgaria 6 10 5 21
10 Italy 5 3 10 18

These are the top ten nations that won medals at the 1972 Games.

Medal count

Date August September
26th
Sat 		27th
Sun 		28th
Mon 		29th
Tue 		30th
Wed 		31st
Thu 		1st
Fri 		2nd
Sat 		3rd
Sun 		4th
Mon 		5th
Tue 		6th
Wed 		7th
Thu 		8th
Fri 		9th
Sat 		10th
Sun 		11th
Mon
Archery ● ●
Athletics ● ● ● ● ● ●
● ● ● 		● ● ●
● ● ● 		●
● ● 		● ● ●
● ● ● ● 		● ● ●
● ● 		● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
Basketball ●
Boxing ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
Canoeing ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
Cycling ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Diving ● ● ● ●
Equestrian ● ● ● ● ● ●
Fencing ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Field hockey ●
Football (soccer) ●
Gymnastics ● ● ● ● ● ●
● ● 		● ● ●
● ● ●
Handball ●
Judo ● ● ● ● ● ●
Modern pentathlon ● ●
Rowing ● ● ● ●
● ● ●
Sailing ● ● ●
● ● ●
Shooting ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Swimming ●
● ● 		● ●
● ● 		● ●
● ● 		●
● ● 		●
● ● 		● ●
● ● 		● ●
● ● 		● ●
● ●
Volleyball ● ●
Water polo ●
Weightlifting ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Wrestling ● ●
● ● ● ●
● ● ● ● 		● ●
● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
Total gold medals 2 8 8 13 27 16 21 14 13 2 16 3 26 23 1
Ceremonies ● ●
Date 26th
Sat 		27th
Sun 		28th
Mon 		29th
Tue 		30th
Wed 		31st
Thu 		1st
Fri 		2nd
Sat 		3rd
Sun 		4th
Mon 		5th
Tue 		6th
Wed 		7th
Thu 		8th
Fri 		9th
Sat 		10th
Sun 		11th
Mon
August September
 ●  Opening ceremony     Event competitions  ●  Event finals  ●  Closing ceremony
All times are in Central European Time (UTC+1)

Calendar

Demonstration sports

The 1972 Summer Olympic programme featured 195 events in the following 21 sports:

Medals awarded

Waldi, mascot

Venues

West Germany won gold medal 13, silver medal 11, bronze medal 16, then West Germany won Euro 1972 in Belgium.

Munich Olympics commemorative 10-mark coin, 1972
  • Mark Spitz, a swimmer from the United States, set a world record when he won seven gold medals (while on the way to setting a new world record for each of his seven gold medals) in a single Olympics, bringing his lifetime total to nine (he had won two golds in Mexico City's Games four years earlier). Being Jewish, Spitz was asked to leave Munich before the closing ceremonies for his own protection, after fears arose that he would be an additional target of those responsible for the Munich massacre. Spitz's record stood until 2008, when it was beaten by Michael Phelps who won 8 gold medals in the pool.
  • Olga Korbut, a Soviet gymnast, became a media star after winning a gold medal in the team competition event, failing to win in the individual all-around after a fall (she was beaten by Lyudmilla Turischeva), and finally winning two gold medals in the Balance Beam and the floor exercise events.
  • In the final of the men's basketball, the United States lost to the Soviet Union, in what USA Basketball calls "the most controversial game in international basketball history".[13] In a close-fought match, the U.S. team had initially won with a score of 50–49. However, due to confusing signals from the scorer's table, the final 3 seconds of the game were replayed twice and the Soviet team was able to regain the lead and claim a 51-50 victory. Ultimately the U.S team refused to accept their silver medals, which remain held in a vault in Lausanne, Switzerland.
  • Lasse Virén of Finland won the 5,000 and 10,000 m (the latter after a fall), a feat he repeated in the 1976 Summer Olympics.
  • Valeriy Borzov of the Soviet Union won both the 100 m and 200 m in track and field. The top two US sprinters and medal favorites in the 100 m, Rey Robinson and Eddie Hart, missed their quarter final heats after being given the wrong starting time.
  • Two American 400 m runners, Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collett, acted casually on the medal stand, twirled their medals (gold and silver, respectively), joked with one another and did not face the American flag as "The Star-Spangled Banner" was being played during the award ceremony. They were banned from the Olympics for life, as Tommie Smith and John Carlos had been in the 1968 Summer Olympics. Since John Smith had pulled a hamstring in the final and had been ruled unfit to run, the United States were forced to scratch from the 4×400 m relay.
  • Dave Wottle won the men's 800 m, after being last for the first 600 m, at which point he started to pass runner after runner up the final straightaway, finally grabbing the lead in the final 18 metres to win by 0.03 seconds ahead of the favorite, the Soviet Yevgeny Arzhanov. At the victory ceremony, Wottle forgot to remove his golf cap. This was interpreted by some as a form of protest against the Vietnam War, but Wottle later apologized.
  • Australian swimmer Shane Gould won three gold medals, a silver, and a bronze medal at the age of 15.
  • Handball (last held in 1936) and Archery (last held in 1920) returned as Olympic sports after a long absence.
  • Slalom canoeing was held for the first time at the Olympics.
  • Dan Gable won the gold medal in wrestling without having a single point scored against him. No other athlete has ever accomplished such a feat in Olympic wrestling.
  • Wim Ruska became the first judoka to win two gold medals.
  • For the first time, the Olympic Oath was taken by a representative of the referees.
  • American Frank Shorter, who was born in Munich, became the first from his country in 64 years to win the Olympic marathon. As Shorter was nearing the stadium, German student Norbert Sudhaus entered the stadium wearing a track uniform, joined the race and ran the last kilometre; thinking he was the winner, the crowd began cheering him before officials realized the hoax and security escorted Sudhaus off the track. Arriving seconds later, Shorter was understandably perplexed to see someone ahead of him and to hear the boos and catcalls meant for Sudhaus. This was the third time in Olympic history that an American had won the marathon (after Thomas Hicks 1904 and Johnny Hayes 1908) — and in none of those three instances did the winner enter the stadium first.
Otl Aicher's signage pictograms designed for the Munich Olympic Games

Highlights

[12]

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