The Red Smith Reader Page 7

  A man is not unclean because he earns his living with his muscles.

  MURDER IN MUNICH

  MUNICH, 1972

  Olympic Village was under siege. Two men lay murdered and eight others were held at gunpoint in imminent peril of their lives. Still the games went on. Canoeists paddled through their races. Fencers thrust and parried in make-believe duels. Boxers scuffled. Basketball players scampered across the floor like happy children. Walled off in their dream world, appallingly unaware of the realities of life and death, the aging playground directors who conduct this quadrennial muscle dance ruled that a little bloodshed must not be permitted to interrupt play.

  It was 4:30 A.M. when Palestinian terrorists invaded the housing complex where athletes from twelve nations live, and shot their way into the Israeli quarters.

  More than five hours later, word came down from Avery Brundage, retiring president of the International Olympic Committee, that sport would proceed as scheduled. Canoe racing had already begun. Wrestling started an hour later. Before long competition was being held in eleven of the twenty-two sports on the Olympic calendar.

  Not until 4:00 P.M. did some belated sense of decency dictate suspension of the obscene activity, and even then exception was made for games already in progress. They went on and on while hasty plans were laid for a memorial service.

  The men who run the Olympics are not evil men. Their shocking lack of awareness can’t be due to callousness. It has to be stupidity.

  Four years ago in Mexico City when American sprinters stood on the victory stand with fists uplifted in symbolic protest against injustice to blacks, the brass of the United States Olympic Committee couldn’t distinguish between politics and human rights. Declaring that the athletes had violated the Olympic spirit by injecting “partisan politics” into the festival, the waxworks lifted the young men’s credentials and ordered them out of Mexico, blowing up a simple, silent gesture into an international incident.

  When African nations and other blacks threatened to boycott the current games if the white supremacist government of Rhodesia were represented here, Brundage thundered that the action was politically motivated, although it was only through a transparent political expedient that Rhodesia had been invited in the first place. Rhodesia and Brundage were voted down not on moral grounds but to avoid having an all-white carnival.

  On past performances, it must be assumed that in Avery’s view Arab-Israeli warfare, hijacking, kidnapping, and killing all constitute partisan politics not to be tolerated in the Olympics.

  “And anyway,” went the bitter joke today, “these are professional killers; Avery doesn’t recognize them.”

  The fact is, these global clambakes have come to have an irresistible attraction as forums for ideological, social, or racial expression. For this reason, they may have outgrown their britches. Perhaps in the future it will be advisable to substitute separate world championships in swimming, track and field, and so on, which could be conducted in a less hysterical climate.

  In the past, athletes from totalitarian countries have seized upon the Olympics as an opportunity to defect. During the Pan-American Games last summer in Cali, Colombia, a number of Cubans defected and a trainer jumped, fell, or was pushed to his death from the roof of the Cuban team’s dormitory.

  Never, of course, has there been anything like today’s terror. Once those gunmen climbed the wire fence around Olympic Village and shot Moshe Weinberg, the Israeli wrestling coach, all the fun and games lost meaning. Mark Spitz and his seven gold medals seemed curiously unimportant. The fact that the American heavyweight, Duane Bobick, got slugged stupid by Cuba’s Teofilo Stevenson mattered to few besides Bobick.

  Even the disqualification of sixteen-year-old Rick De Mont from the 1,500-meter freestyle swimming, in which he has shattered the world record, slipped into the background. This may be unfortunate, for it appears that the boy was undone through the misfeasance of American team officials and if this is so the facts should be made public.

  The United States party includes 168 coaches, trainers and other functionaries, which seems like enough to take care of 447 athletes. It wasn’t enough, however, to get two world-record sprinters to the starting blocks for the 100-meter dash, and it wasn’t enough to reconcile young De Mont’s asthma treatments with Olympic rules on drugs.

  After the boy won the 400-meter freestyle, a urinalysis showed a trace of ephedrine, a medicine that helps clear nasal passages. A list of forbidden drugs, released before the Games, includes ephedrine. The fact that De Mont uses it for his asthma appears on his application sheet for the Games.

  Why didn’t the American medical staff pick this up and make sure there would be no violation? Efforts to get an answer today were unavailing. Dr. Winston P. Riehl, the chief physician, couldn’t be reached. Dr. Harvey O’Phelan declined to talk.

  THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR IT

  MONTREAL, 1976

  A guy from Germany said he was taking a poll and needed an American opinion: would the Olympic Games survive or collapse? Would there be another carnival four years hence in Moscow and if so, what about 1984? If the American had to bet, would he bet that Olympics would take place in 1984? The American said he sometimes bet on horses and even guessed right on rare occasions, but that was the limit of his imbecility. To bet on people would be stupid; trying to predict how politicians and playground directors would behave four or eight years hence would be sheer madness.

  The Jeux de la XXIe Olympiade are a week old, and nobody is surprised that two dozen nations have walked out in protest, that a fencer was caught cheating and sent away in disgrace, that some judges are incompetent and some less than perfectly impartial, that conflicting ideologies have collided head-on and there have been quarrels and clashes and charges of unsportsmanlike conduct. The big news is that competition has reached the halfway point in spite of these distractions.

  “We had the first of the daily elevator breakdowns about ten minutes ago,” said Tim Horgan of Boston this morning. “If you thought you were in Hook and Ladder Company No. 2, that was the emergency call bells.”

  Excitable is the word for the Hotel Meridien’s self-service elevators. But Montreal’s newest hotel provides creature comforts, courteous service and excellent food. Partly because the accredited press outnumbers competitors by a thousand or so and partly because of security measures made indispensable by the massacre of Israelis in Munich four years ago, interviewing athletes can be difficult, but the Olympics in ancient Greece had an official corps of whip-bearers to keep order, and it is said a master threatened a slave with a trip to Olympia as punishment for disobedience.

  “But some unpleasant and hard things happen in life,” wrote the first century stoic Epictetus. “And do they not happen at Olympia? Do you not swelter? Are you not cramped and crowded? Do you not bathe badly? Are you not drenched whenever it rains? Do you not have your fill of tumult and shouting and other annoyances? But I fancy that you bear and endure it all by balancing it off against the memorable character of the spectacle.”

  Epictetus is quoted by M. I. Finley and H. W. Pleket in their new book, The Olympic Games: The First Thousand Years, and if anybody thinks the troubles besetting Montreal’s big show are a modern development, he ought to check with these scholars.

  The games that started in 776 B.C. on the plain of Olympia beside the Alpheus River in the district of Elis were dedicated to Zeus, and athletes swore by the boss god that they would obey the rules. In the museum at Olympia is a bronze statuette of Zeus hurling a thunderbolt at some bum who violated his oath, but not even that prospect discouraged the cheaters. The first of these in the records was Eupolus of Thessaly, who bribed three boxers to go in the water for him in 388 B.C. He was fined and the money was used to erect a statue of Zeus to appease the god and to warn other crooks. In time there was a long file of these statues, called zanes, outside the stadium, each bearing on its base a description of the offense.

  The Soviet water polo team
created a flap here by calling in sick when it was supposed to play Cuba. Well, in A.D. 93, Apollonius, a boxer from Alexandria, was late for the 218th Olympics and said he had been delayed by headwinds in the Aegean. Heraclides, a teammate from Alexandria, said nuts, the breeze had been favorable but Apollonius had used up his travel time fighting for money in Asia Minor. When they gave the wreath to Heraclides, Apollonius slugged him and got fined.

  Then there was the case of Lichas, the ringer. He was a Spartan diplomat, and when Sparta was barred from the games in 420 B.C. because she was at war with Elis, Lichas entered the chariot race posing as a Boeotian. He was caught and flogged.

  Cheating, faking, using the Olympics for political gain, cashing in on athletic renown—the Greeks had words for it all. Even the ancient judges caught hell. In 396 B.C. they gave a sprinter from Elis a 2-1 decision over a runner from Ambracia. The Olympic Council reversed them and fined the two chauvinists.

  Small wonder that the Roman Emperor Theodosius abolished the games in A.D. 394. Will that happen again? Should it? The thing has grown so big it may collapse of its own weight. It commands such attention that it offers an irresistible temptation as a forum for any individual or group with a statement to make. It is a carnival of nationalism that repels some.

  Drastic changes are needed. Americans, Russians, Chinese, Indians should march under the Olympic flag and no other. Eliminate national anthems and national colors. Play the Olympic hymn and raise the Olympic flag at victory ceremonies. Discontinue all team sports. Forget the nonsense about amateurism and professionalism.

  Olympic athletes were pros 2,500 years ago and they are pros today. Knock off the hypocrisy, stop telling kids what an honor it is to represent their country and give them a chance to play games for the fun of it. Maybe it would work.

  FIELDS OF FRIENDLY STRIFE

  MONTREAL, 1976

  The Games of the XXI Olympiad end tomorrow, and not a moment too soon. Another day or so of camaraderie and good will on the fields of friendly strife and somebody would wind up with a knife between his ribs. Up to now, this sweaty carnival has run smooth as the course of true love, if you don’t count the angry withdrawal of thirty nations, cheating disqualifications, rumors of attempted bribery, political and ideological clashes, threats, bluffs, defections, charges of kidnapping and the use of forbidden steroids.

  It won’t be easy to wait four long years to see them do it all over again in Moscow.

  Grantland Rice wrote a poem saying in effect that “wars are made by old men, but oh, how young they are where all the crosses stand.” With occasional exceptions, the world’s finest athletes who meet in these Games like and respect one another; it is their leaders who stir up trouble.

  The party here began with the Canadian government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau breaking its word to the International Olympic Committee. Although the government had promised that if Montreal got the Games, all teams recognized by the I.O.C. would be welcome, Canada yielded to pressure from Peking and refused to accept Taiwan as the Republic of China, the name accredited by the I.O.C. When the I.O.C. didn’t have the guts to hold Canada to its promise, Taiwan withdrew.

  Black African nations demanded that New Zealand be kicked out because a Kiwi rugby team had played in South Africa, the land of apartheid. The I.O.C. replied that rugby wasn’t an Olympic sport, so twenty-nine countries walked out—removing one of the five rings, each representing a continent, that make up the Olympic symbol.

  In addition to the usual complaints of incompetent or prejudiced judges and rumors that this athlete or that team was high on drugs, discovery that a Soviet fencer had his sword wired illegally and disqualification of an American, a Czech and a Pole for using anabolic steroids enlivened the fortnight of competition. There was also a report that a death threat had caused the withdrawal of the Soviet sprinter, Valery Borzov, from the 200-meter dash.

  Up to now, however, no male ringer masquerading as a woman has flunked the sex test.

  Meanwhile, two Rumanian athletes and one from the Soviet Union sought political asylum in Canada. This brought no official response from Rumanian authorities but Vitaly Smirnov, the boss Russian here, hollered that Sergei Nemtsanov, a seventeen-year-old diver, had been “kidnapped.” Smirnov said last night that if the kid wasn’t returned immediately to Olympic Village, the Soviets would pull out of today’s competition and tomorrow’s closing ceremonies.

  However, after meeting with the I.O.C. this morning, the Soviets withdrew that threat. It was explained euphemistically that the I.O.C. had “requested them not to take extreme measures.” What probably happened is that the I.O.C. said in effect: “You pull out now, and we’ll pull the 1980 Games out of Moscow.”

  Admittedly, that would require a form reversal by the I.O.C, which is not noted for displaying the courage of its convictions. If the I.O.C. sat still when a continent walked out of the show entirely, where would it get the backbone to take firm action about one country quitting a day or so ahead of schedule?

  One answer may be that if the nation that has been awarded the next carnival were to pick up its toys and go home now, it would do more than embarrass its host. It would throw the whole Olympic movement into turmoil, threatening survival of the Games. With a ready-made club to use in this emergency, the worms might turn.

  Though they didn’t go home, the Soviets didn’t give Canada absolution for harboring defectors. Mihail Efimov, press officer, told Neil Amdur of The New York Times today that the U.S.S.R. still “reserved the right to make some solution in the future.”

  Did this mean Russia might boycott next September’s Canada Cup, an open hockey tournament among Canada, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Sweden and the U.S.S.R.?

  “Maybe,” Efimov said.

  Up to now there has been no official word as to young Nemtsanov’s whereabouts or his motives for defecting. There is a rumor that he is sweet on a girl he met on an earlier visit. However, he isn’t the first athlete from beyond the Iron Curtain to defect during international competitions, and love isn’t always the spur.

  As the story here goes, John Naber, America’s top swimmer, invited his chief rival from East Germany, Roland Matthes, out to dinner, and after consulting his leaders Matthes returned with a long face. “They won’t let me go,” he is supposed to have said. People can get plumb sick of that sort of thing.

  BOYCOTT THE MOSCOW OLYMPICS

  1980

  Neville Trotter is as right as two martinis at lunch. He is the Conservative member of the British Parliament who has asked the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to lead a worldwide boycott of the Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

  “Another venue should be found,” Mr. Trotter says, “and if necessary the games should be postponed for a year. This is the one lever we have to show our outrage at this naked aggression by Russia. We should do all we can to reduce the Moscow Olympics to a shambles.”

  The boycott movement hasn’t gained much momentum as yet. It was discussed as a possibility at a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations in Brussels. On the MacNeil/Lehrer Report on television, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said a boycott should be considered and Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana said it would be “small potatoes.”

  At the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, Lord Killanin, president of the I.O.C., declared the games would go on and pleaded for politicians to stay out of Olympic affairs. If horses ran as true to form as the Olympic oligarchy, the favorite would never lose. Ever since they learned to speak with heads buried in sand, the badgers have been saying that politics has no place in the Olympic movement, and as long as any of them can remember, the games have been a stage for political discord and social protest.

  The official—and inflexible—position of the Olympic brass on these matters was enunciated almost half a century ago by the noblest badger of them all, the late Avery Brundage. In 1935 there was strong sentiment in this c
ountry against participation in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, on the grounds that sending a team to that carnival of Nazism would be tantamount to endorsing Hitler.

  “Frankly,” said Brundage, then president of the United States Olympic Committee, “I don’t think we have any business to meddle in this question. We are a sports group, organized and pledged to promote clean competition and sportsmanship. When we let politics, racial questions or social disputes creep into our actions, we’re in for trouble.”

  The boycott movement was defeated, and Avery in victory was even franker than before. “Certain Jews must now understand,” he wrote, “that they cannot use these games as a weapon in their boycott against the Nazis.”

  Hitler’s anti-Semitism eventually led to the unspeakable Holocaust, but in 1935 the only known fatality was the suicide of Fritz Rosenfelder after his expulsion from an athletic club in Wurttemberg.

  When Americans look back to the 1936 Olympics, they take pleasure only in the memory of Jesse Owens’ four gold medals, in the discomfiture of Joseph Goebbels at the success of America’s “black auxiliaries.” Except for that, we are ashamed at having been guests at Adolf Hitler’s big party.

  We should have known better. As early as 1933, Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer had carried this comment on Rosenfelder’s suicide: “We need waste no words here. Jews are Jews and there is no place for them in German sports. Germany is the Fatherland of Germans and not Jews, and the Germans have the right to do what they want in their own country.”

  We didn’t know better, and we were painfully slow to learn. General Charles E. Sherrill, an American member of the I.O.C., asked that Helene Mayer be invited to compete for Germany to prove that Jews would not be discriminated against. Daughter of a Christian mother and a Jewish father, she was a champion fencer who had represented Germany in the 1928 and 1932 Olympics. On his return to America, General Sherrill said: “I went to Germany for the purpose of getting at least one Jew on the German Olympic team, and I feel that my job is finished. As for obstacles placed in the way of Jewish athletes or any others in trying to reach Olympic ability, I would have no more business discussing that in Germany than if the Germans attempted to discuss the Negro situation in the American South or the treatment of the Japanese in California.”