Ten unforgettable Olympic moments

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Since French baron Pierre de Coubertin gave fresh life to the Olympic movement in 1896, the Games have been witness to some of the most unforgetable moments in sports. Some of those moments have been dazzling athletic achievements. Others have been moments that organizers would have preferred never happened. But good or bad, these events have helped create the memories that shape our perceptions of the Olympic Games to the present day.

So here, in no particular order, are ten unforgettable moments from the Summer Olympic Games.

Jesse Owens – Berlin 1936

In 1936, Nazi Germany played host to the Summer Olmpics, and Germany's Adolf Hitler was determined to prove the superiority of the Aryan race.

African-American track star Jesse Owens, a son of a sharecropper and the grandsons of slaves, had other plans. In a display that dealt a tremendous blow to the Nazi's racist ideology, Owens won the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the long jump. He was also a key member of the 400-meter relay team that won the gold medal. He set records in three of those events. He was the first American to ever win four medals in an Olympic Games.

But as Owens himself later noted, his single-handed destruction of Hitler's myth of Aryan superiority did little at the time to advance the cause of African-Americans in the US.

"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either."

The Soviet Union-USA Gold Medal basketball final – Munich 1972

It was as bad a call by officials as has ever been made in a sporting contest. The 1972 gold medal basketball game between the United States and the Soviet Union was a real squeaker, but it looked as if the Americans had pulled it out. But that was not to be, as long-time Monitor sports writer and now sports blogger Ross Atkins recalled recently:

After the US appeared to have kept its perfect Olympic record intact and escaped a huge upset by the Soviets in the men’s final, the referees twice decided to put three seconds back on the clock. The Soviets managed to score the winning basket on the second replay and win the gold medal. Distraught by what they considered an injustice, the members of US team voted unanimously to refuse their silver medals. They’ve never reneged, and to this day the medals sit in a Swiss vault.

How seriously do the American players who played on that team take this boycott? Team captain Kenny Davis actually placed in his will a request that his wife and children can never, ever receive the silver medal from that game.

Ethiopian Abebe Bikila wins a gold medal while running barefoot – Rome 1960

Abebe Bikila was a young member of the Imperial Bodyguard of Ethiopia when he ran the marathon in the 1960 Games in Rome. Up until that time, no black African had ever won a gold medal in the Olympic Games, let alone a prestigious track and field event like the marathon. But Bikila, running without his shoes in the chilly dawn of a Roman summer day, broke that dry spell, and set a new world record at the same time.

It was fitting that his win came in Italy, the nation that had invaded his homeland three decades earlier. His feat captured the imagination of the entire world. Four years later in Tokyo, he repeated it, becoming the first man to ever win gold in two Olympic marathons (a feat only duplicated once).

He also established a trend that has to this day dominated long-distance events around the globe: the superiority of runners from eastern Africa.

Mark Spitz' seven gold medals – Munich 1972

Before anyone had ever heard of this year's hyped Olympic swimming hopeful, Michael Phelps, there was an even greater sensation in the pool: Mark Spitz. Spitz promised he would win seven gold medals at the '72 games in Munich, Germany.

Not only was he as good as his word, winning four individual and three relay golds, but he also set, or helped set, a world record in each race. No athlete in any discipline has come close to matching his performance.

In 1990, 18 years after his Olympic medal spree, Spitz announced he planned to try to qualify for the 1992 Barcelona Games in the 100 metres butterfly. But he did so poorly that he announced that, once and for all, his swimming days were over.

Ben Johnson loses gold medal in doping scandal – Seoul 1988

It was arguably Canada's greatest athletic achievement when Ben Johnson raced across the finish line first in the 100-metre dash at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, making him the "fastest human being ever." Within two days that joy turned into one of the Olympics' most disappointing moments, when Olympic officials announced that Johnson had been disqualified because he had tested positive for steroid use.

After Johnson, Olympic organizers could no longer avoid the fact that many top athletes were using drugs to help them win. The cat-and-mouse game between athletes and Olympic officials over the use of performance-enhancing drugs continues to this day. But at the 2004 Games in Athens, there will be a new wrinkle – along with urine, the blood of gold medal winning athletes will also be tested, which is "considered a huge threat to cheaters."

Bob Beamon jumps 29 feet – Mexico City 1968

For many Olympic enthusiasts, it is the single greatest athletic achievement in Olympic history. In 1968, US long jumper Bob Beamon won the gold medal at the Games in Mexico City in a jump that didn't just break the old world record, but completely destroyed it.

His winning jump, (29-ft, 21/2in.), shattered the old mark by nearly 2 feet. (Beamon's record was finally broken by 2 inches in 1991 by US athlete Mike Powell.)

One little known fact is that a few months before the Mexico City Games, he had been suspended from the University of Texas-El Paso track team for refusing to compete against Brigham Young University, a Mormon college, which at that time had what Beamon considered racist policies. This meant he had to train for the games without a coach, so former Olympian Ralph Boston coached him unoffficially.

Nadia Comaneci's perfect scores – Montreal 1976

She was the first perfect ten. Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci simultaneously amazed and stunned the sporting world during the 1976 Games in Montreal when she scored the first perfect marks in Olympic gymnastics – in fact, she was awarded seven perfect marks during the competition. The diminuitive star went home with gold medals in the all-round competition, the balance beam and the uneven bars. She won two more golds in the 1980 Moscow Games.

But once she returned to Romania, Comaneci's life became almost unbearable as she suffered under the regime of of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. She fled the country secretly in 1989 (literally in the middle of the night) and now lives in the US with her husband, former US Olympic gymnast Bart Conners, whom she married in 1996.

Jim Thorpe becomes world's greatest athlete – Stockholm 1912

Before there was Jesse Owens, there was Jim Thorpe, considered by many to be the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century. At the 1912 Games in Stockholm, he won both the pentathlon (no longer contested) and the decathlon.

King Gustav V handed Thorpe a silver chalice in the shape of a Viking ship lined with gold and embedded with jewels. "Sir," said the king. "You are the greatest athlete in the world." To which Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King."

The following year, however, a Massachusetts newspaper reported that Thorpe had been paid for playing semi-professional baseball in North Carolina in the summer of 1909 and 1910. Thorpe was stripped of his medals in a very dubious hearing. Although he tried for years to have his victories reinstated, racism (Thorpe was part-native America), snobbery and perhaps revenge kept then-Olympic president Avery Brundage from recognizing the obvious. (Brundage was one of the athletes that Thorpe had badly beaten in Stockholm in 1912.)

In 1982 the International Olympic Committee finally relented. Almost 30 years after Thorpe's death, the IOC finally lifted the ban and returned Thorpe's name to its record books. The following year, replica medals were given to his family.

Cathy Freeman races for a continent – Sydney 2000

The first Aboriginal athlete to compete for Australia, Cathy Freeman ignited the Olympic torch in the main stadium at the 2000 Sydney Games. Ten days later she literally ran for an entire continent when she won the gold in the 400 meter dash.

Australia had been repeatedly disappointed during the Games, espedcially in the pool where the country had entertained hopes of dethroning the US as champions. It was not to be. Although Freeman was favored in her event, Australians felt her run was the last chance the country had to prove itself on the world stage.

Freeman had always been a controversial figure for Australians.

At the 1994 Commonwealth Games, she took her victory lap with the Aboriginal flag draped over her shoulder before finally adding the Australian flag. That was the first public proclamation of Aboriginal rights and, as a political statement, on par with the clenched fist salute with which Tommy Smith (and bronze winner John Carlos) greeted his gold-medal-winning world record run in the 200m at Mexico in 1968.

In March this year, Freeman, who is also running in the '04 Athens games, told The New York Times: "The time will come when I can be more instrumental in politics and Aboriginal affairs. But now, I think I'm playing a big part doing what I'm doing."

Spiridon Louis, the 'longest of longshots' – Athens 1896

Things weren't looking good for the host nation of the first Olympic Games. Greeks had cheered the rebirth of the Olympic movement and were sure they would win a host of medals. But as the games came to a conclusion, Greek athletes had failed to win a medal. The marathon looked like their best opportunity. Of the 17 runners who started that day, a little more than 26 miles from the Olympic Stadium in Athens, 13 were Greek. One of them was a water-carrier and sheperd named Spiridon Louis.

But as the runners weaved their way towards the capital, first a Frenchmen and then an Australian led for most of the way. At one point during the race, Louis actually stopped in a restaurant and had an adult beverage. He loudly declared he would still win the race. He then started to close the gap with the leaders and at the 20-mile mark, he took the lead which he never relinquished.

As he ran into the Olympic stadium, he was met by two Greek princes – Crown Prince Constantine and Prince George – who accompanied him on his final lap. As the official report reported, pandemonium broke loose:

Here the Olympic victor was received with full honor; the king rose from his seat and congratulated him most warmly on his success. Some of the king’s aides-de-camp, and several members of the committee went so far as to kiss and embrace the victor, who finally was carried in triumph to the retiring room under the vaulted entrance. The scene witnessed then inside the stadium cannot be easily described, even strangers were carried away by the general enthusiasm.

Louis became, and remained, a hero all his life in Greece. Many sports clubs in Greece and abroad still carry his name to this day. In fact, the Olympic Stadium in which many new memories will be created over the next two weeks is named after the "longest of longshots" who won glory for the home of the Olympics.

PHOTO GALLERY

Losing

Aug. 26, 2004