XXI Olympiad

George Daniels

Description

XXI Olympiad, the nineteenth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins with the story of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal Canada. In the wake of the terrorist tragedy that marred the Munich Olympics four years earlier, Montreal is remembered for the athletic performances of the athletes.Despite a boycott staged by several African nations to protest the policy of apartheid in South Africa, the Montreal Games produced a bevy of international stars. The book profiles memorable athletes like 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci of Romania, who posted an unprecedented seven perfect-10 scores in winning gymnastic gold; and Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto, who performed his final event with a broken knee to help the Japanese team win team gold. Other notable participants in Montreal included decathlon winner Bruce Jenner; Princess Anne of Great Britain, who competed in equestrian events; and racewalker Alex Oakley of Canada, who became the oldest-ever Olympic track competitor at age 50.The second part of the book focuses on the Winter Olympics of 1980, held in Lake Placid, N.Y. It tells the story of the "Miracle on Ice", the gold medal victory of the amateur US hockey team over the mighty Soviets, ending a run of hockey golds for the USSR extending back to 1960. Other athletes profiled include American speed skater Eric Heiden, who remains the only athlete to win five gold medals at one Winter Olympics, and skier Hanni Wenzel, who claimed the only two gold medals ever for tiny Liechtenstein. Juan Antonio Samaranch, former President of the International Olympic Committee, called The Olympic Century, "The most comprehensive history of the Olympic games ever published".

Informations

• Publié par: Warwick Press Inc.
• Date de parution: 18 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781987944181
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 14 Mo

Extrait

THE OLYMPIC CENTURY THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MODERN OLYMPIC MOVEMENT VOLUME 19
THE XVI OLYMPIAD
MONTREAL 1976 LAKE PLACID 1980
by George G. Daniels
W
Warwick Press Inc. Toronto
Copyright 1996 WSRP
The Olympic Century series was produced as a joint effort among the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and World Sport Research Publications, to provide an official continuity series that will serve as a permanent on-line Olympic education program for individuals, schools, and public libraries.
Published by:
Warwick Press Inc., Toronto
www.olympicbooks.com
1st Century Project: Charles Gary Allison
Publishers: Robert G. Rossi, Jim Williamson, Rona Wooley
Editors: Christian D. Kinney, Laura Forman
Art Director: Christopher M. Register
Picture Editors: Lisa Bruno, Debora Lemmons
Digital Imaging: Richard P. Majeske
Associate Editor, Research: Mark Brewin
Associate Editor, Appendix: Elsa Ramirez
Designers: Kimberley Davison, Diane Myers, Chris Conlee
Staff Researchers: Brad Haynes, Alexandra Hesse, Pauline Ploquin
Copy Editor: Harry Endrulat
Venue Map Artist: Dave Hader, Studio Conceptions, Toronto
Fact Verification: Carl and Liselott Diem Archives of the German Sport University at Cologne, Germany
Statistics: Bill Mallon, Walter Teutenberg
Memorabilia Consultants: Manfred Bergman, James D. Greensfelder, John P. Kelly, James B. Lally, Ingrid O Neil
Office Staff: Diana Fakiola, Brian M. Heath, Edward J. Messier, Brian P. Rand, Robert S. Vassallo, Chris Waters
Senior Consultant: Dr. Dietrich Quanz (Germany)
Special Consultants: Walter Borgers, Dr. Karl Lennartz, Dr. Dietrich Quanz, Dr. Norbert Mueller (Germany), Ian Buchanan (United Kingdom), Wolf Lyberg (Sweden), Dr. Nicholas Yalouris (Greece).
International Contributors: Jean Durry (France), Dr. Fernand Landry (Canada), Dr. Antonio Lombardo (Italy), Dr. John A. MacAloon (U.S.A.), Dr. Jujiro Narita (Japan), C. Robert Paul (U.S.A.), Dr. Roland Renson (Belgium), Anthony Th. Bijkirk (Netherlands), Dr. James Walston (Ombudsman)
International Research and Assistance: John S. Baick (New York), Matthieu Brocart (Paris), Alexander Fakiolas (Athens), Bob Miyakawa (Tokyo), Rona Lester (London), Dominic LoTempio (Columbia), George Kostas Mazareas (Boston), Georgia McDonald (Colorado Springs), Wendy Nolan (Princeton), Alexander Ratner (Moscow), Jon Simon (Washington, D.C.), Frank Strasser (Cologne), Val ry Turco (Lausanne), Laura Walden (Rome), Jorge Zocchi (Mexico City)
All rights reserved. No part of The Olympic Century book series may be copied, republished, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior written consent of the IOC, the USOC, and WSRP.
eBook Conversion: eBook Partnership, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-1987944-24-2 (24 Volume Series)
ISBN 978-1-1987944-18-1 (Volume 19)
CONTENTS
I TRIBULATIONS
II TRIUMPHS
III THE GAMES AND GEOPOLITCS
IV UPSETS
A PPENDIX
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
P HOTO C REDITS
B IBLIOGRAPHY
I NDEX
COLONIAL CANADA
With round-the-clock construction finally ended and politics threatening to end the Games completely, Montreal organizers breathed a sigh of relief when the opening ceremony finally started. It began with a fanfare of trumpets announcing the arrival of Great Britain s Queen Elizabeth. After she took her seat in the Olympic stadium s royal box, a second blare of trumpets set in motion the Parade of Nations. It was a little short, since only 94 of the 120 countries attending the Games marched, the remaining 26 showing their opposition to apartheid-a hot issue in the sports world at the time-with a last-minute boycott of the procession.
With the athletes in place, Montreal organizing committee president Roger Rousseau welcomed guests to the Games, a greeting echoed by International Olympic Committee president Michael Morris, the Lord Killanin, who introduced Queen Elizabeth and asked her to declare the Games open. After she did, the Olympic flag was raised. Then a group of Montreal dancers (right) , dressed in colonial-era costumes of the St. Lawrence River Valley, performed with a dance troupe from Munich, representing the host city of the previous Games.
Afterward came a three-gun salute, followed by the release of 80 doves, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the modem Games. The crowd grew silent as Stephane Prefontaine and Sandra Henderson, two 15-year-olds representing the youth of Canada jogged into the stadium with the Olympic torch. They ran together around the track to a podium in the middle of the infield and set the Olympic cauldron alight. As the crowd cheered, an international group of young gymnasts took the field and performed an exhibition. Then Pierre St. Jean, a Montreal weightlifter, walked to the rostrum and took the athlete s oath. A band struck up the Canadian anthem, and at its end the athletes made their exit.
TRIBULATIONS
MONTREAL, CANADA 1976
Naiad, water goddess, dream swimmer. Sportswriters covering the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal had to dive deep for words to describe East Germany s Kornelia Ender, and they usually came up breathing hard. In the freestyle and butterfly sprints that were her competitive specialties, there had never been anyone like her. She was at the peak of her powers, not quite 18 years old, big and strong and sleek, standing 5 foot 10 and weighing 154 pounds, an altogether magnificent sight in her skintight Lycra swimsuit. Her conditioning approached the outer limits of human possibility: Under the watchful eyes of trainers and coaches, she had been working with weights, doing gymnastics, and swimming many miles every day since she was 11. Her form was flawless. She enters the water as if she were a flat rock skimming across a glassy lake, said one admirer, and she made her turns with crisp, matchless efficiency.
She was pretty; she was blonde; and, to the infinite delight of journalists looking for angles, she was engaged to East Germany s best male swimmer, backstroker Roland Matthes, who had won two Olympic gold medals at Mexico City 1968 and two more at Munich 1972. The romance conjured visions of super children splashing to victory in the pools of tomorrow. (The pair, who together held a mind-boggling 49 world records, would later marry and then divorce.)
Romance aside, the heart of Kornelia Ender s story lay in the record books. As a 13-year-old she had taken three silvers at Munich. She had followed that performance with a long series of top finishes in European and world championships. By the time of the Montreal Games, she had set 18 world marks in various events, with some truly epochal barrier busting along the way: She was the first woman to break 58 seconds in the 100-meter freestyle, then the first to break 57 seconds, then the first to break 56 seconds. By general agreement, she was a swimmer without peer.
But Konny Ender, as her friends and adoring fans called her, didn t see it quite that way. She was keenly aware of past failures at one particular test, the 200-meter freestyle. Although she held the world record, she had never won the event in a major international competition. The reigning queen at 200 meters was a formidable American named Shirley Babashoff, two years older. The previous year, Babashoff had handily beaten Ender in the 200-meter freestyle at the world championships in Cali, Colombia. Now, with the whole world watching, the two would duel at that distance again. Babashoff was determined to show that her Cali win had been no fluke. Ender wanted to claim the one prize that had eluded her.
Below: An exultant Kornelia Ender celebrates winning her fourth race of the Games. Montreal brought the career of the seven-time Olympic medalist to a close. She retired late in 1976 amid accolades proclaiming her the greatest woman swimmer of all time .

The showdown didn t come right away: Before the 200 meters, they met twice in other events on the Montreal program. On July 18, the first day of the competitions, each swam the freestyle leg for her team in the 4 x 100-meter medley relay. The East German foursome took the gold easily, beating the Americans by almost 7 seconds. The next day, Ender and Babashoff clashed in the final of the 100-meter freestyle. Ender won that race in the world-record time of 55.65 seconds, well ahead of Babashoff, who finished fifth. But the outcome of the 100 meters surprised no one, since the event had always been dominated by Ender. In any case, Babashoff, who was better at longer distances anyway, quickly rebuilt her confidence by picking up silvers in the freestyle 400 and 800 (neither swum by Ender).
July 22 brought the final of the 200-meter freestyle, the race that both women regarded as the decisive event. Ender had been preparing for it ever since Cali. Poor pacing had been her problem then: She had expended too much energy in the early going and had faded badly near the finish. She didn t intend to make that mistake again. For months she and her coaches had worked on a pace that would keep her close to Babashoff for most of the distance and leave enough in reserve for a closing sprint.
As luck would have it, the Montreal organizers had devised a schedule that was highly unfavorable to Ender s strength-saving strategy: The 200-meter final was to be held less than half an hour after the final in the 100-meter butterfly, another of Konny Enders specialties. The butterfly is the most physically demanding of all swimming strokes and was bound to drain her. She could only hope that all those years of training would see her through.
The butterfly went as anticipated. Ender won easily, tying the world record-her own, naturally. That race was completed at 7:46 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, after the completion of the medal awards ceremony, she left the victory stand and headed for the dressing room to change swimsuits and do some quick stretching