About
The Munich Olympic Games will be forever associated with tragedy. True they surpassed all previous Games in terms of scale - 7134 athletes from a staggering 121 nations took part in 195 events, but ten days into this festival of sport, on the early hours of September 5, eight Palestinian terrorists belonging from the Black September group entered the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli team and took nine more hostage. During a failed rescue attempt at the military airport of Fürstenfeldbruck, all nine the Israeli hostages, a German police officer, and all but three of the terrorists were killed. The Munich Massacre was undoubtedly the blackest day in Olympic history.
The Games were suspended and a memorial service was held in the main stadium. But 34 hours later, the International Olympic Committee ordered the competitions to resume as a mark of defiance to the terrorists.
American swimmer Mark Spitz, won gold medals in all seven competitions he entered within a period of just eight days. Having boldly predicted the same feat in Mexico City only to come up well short, his self-confidence was fully vindicated in Munich, and he is rightly regarded as perhaps the finest Olympic swimmer of all-time.
Tiny Soviet gymnast, Olga Korbut captured the hearts of all who saw her dramatic story of success in the team competition, failure in the individual competition and renewed success in the apparatus finals.
Korbut also inspired a generation of schoolgirls to take up the sport.
The 1972 Games were the first to make use of an official mascot - a multi-coloured dachshund called Waldi.
Team GB
Britain's largest-ever team at an overseas Olympics returned home with only four gold medals. The only gold in the Olympic stadium was achieved by Mary Peters in the pentathlon. The blonde secretary from Belfast put together one of the finest series of performances ever seen by a female British athlete, including clear wins in the shot put and high jump and the run of her life in the 200m at the end of the second and final day of competition to beat local favourite Heide Rosendahl into second place. She scored 4801 points, an improvement of 26 points on the previous world record.
Rodney Pattisson won his second consecutive sailing gold in the Flying Dutchman class, this time partnered by Chris Davies. The duo won four of the seven races to take overall victory with one day to spare. Alan Warren and David Hunt looked set for a gold medal in the Tempest event but faded on the last two days of competition and had to settle for silver.
Britain’s other gold medal success in Munich came at the equestrian centre. Richard Meade became Britain’s first ever individual winner in an Olympic equestrian event, while the British team became the first since the Dutch in 1928 to retain the three-day event title. With an unbeaten record in all competitions stretching back before the 1968 Mexico Games, the team of Meade, Mary Gordon-Watson, Bridget Parker and Captain Mark Phillips pressed home their class with a superb all-round display. Ann Moore came close gold medal in the individual show jumping , but was edged into the silver medal position by Italy’s Graziano Mancinelli.