The Rest Is History - 81. Modern Olympics - Part 2

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Tom and Dominic continue their journey through the history of the Olympics, turning their attention from post-war to the present day.  They discuss Cold War rivalries, financial extravagance, the influence of TV and the darkest moments in Olympic history. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jon Gill Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishist the king of our Olympic podcast trilogy. So Tolkien originally began The Lord of the Rings thinking it would be one short book, and it turned into three monsters. We decided to do a podcast on the ancient Olympicsics and then we decided to do the modern olympics and that's turned into two podcasts um just on the modern olympics it definitely won't be three because i don't think we have enough material but we have tons of good stuff don't we tom the modern olympics what a weird i'm hoping that you do i'm less knowledgeable about this that's right this

is very much your patch i can talk talk about Daley Thompson for hours. Yeah, Daley Thompson, but also the Cold War, I guess. Yeah, which is big. The great backdrop to this. It is, it is, absolutely. So, in the previous one, we got to the Second World War. Yeah. And London was due to host the 1944 Games.

Obvious reasons, couldn't, because London was busy with other things. But in the wake of that, london gets the games in 1948 yeah and it's blitzed it's bombed out it's austerity games is london is in a worse condition in 1948 than it probably would have been in 1944 because austerity is bitten so deep kicked in yeah um so that the um we talked in the in the first part about the problems that people had with the swimming people kind of contracting typhoid because it had been set in a lagoon or getting caught up on the currents of rivers there is a swimming pool in the the london games um but it has a massive crack due to bomb damage and so all the way through they have to

keep topping it up that's a good story that's so that basically conforms to i mean american athletes must have been utterly unsurprised by that that must have absolutely conformed to their image of 1940s london as this sort of gray shabby decay yes which it was kind of 1948 i mean 1984 it's um absolutely it's the city of and the athletes stay in RAF camps, don't they? So it's so kind of in the shadow of the war. They even... Because everybody's on rationing, they get given the special rations

that are given to miners, to coal miners. Yes. So... Yeah, but also, Dominic, they get given soap, but they're asked to bring their own towels. Bring your own... That's's great that's like where don't people when they go on holiday in scandinavia they often take their own sheets when they book

these kind of cabins and chalets and stuff there's this sort of spirit of you know you bring your own stuff and whatnot maybe the olympics should be done on that principle it would sort of remove some of the hubris yes puncture some would. Puncture some of the... Yes. Yeah, the Olympic village, you know, you should all be bringing your own towel. So anyway, so that was the London Olympics. And they've sort of lost touch at that point, haven't they? I mean, for utterly understandable

and indeed perhaps admirable reasons, the London Olympics have broken with the 1936 pattern that we talked about in the last episode so in the last episode we talked about having two games los angeles and berlin created the modern olympics with the torch with the with the relay carrying the torch with the podiums with the playing of anthems with the sort of fascistic iconography but l But London in 1948 doesn't really seem to have that, does it? It's all a bit sort of shabby and a bit sort of... But shabbiness becomes the point, doesn't it? Yeah, it is the point.

I mean, that's the whole point. Even baggy trousers and stuff. I think the only infrastructure that is built is half a mile of pavement to get pedestrians from somewhere to to somewhere else but i mean for obvious reasons that's basically it they had they had a much more arguably a much healthier attitude towards olympic infrastructure than we do now because they had other things to spend money on but also because there's a revulsion from the excesses of 36 because i think even at that point

the berlin games are beginning to assume this sort of incredibly diabolical role in the story of hitler and his rise to power and appeasement and the world's sort of blinding themselves but the realities of his regime the story from 1948 onwards though is increasingly extravagant yeah infrastructure tv and cold war rivalry so that the soviet union victor in the war great power yeah um does not come to london hasn't it it disappeared ideologically supposedly it disapproves of this you know the corinthian spirit i mean unsurprisingly but 1952 at helsinki and finland of course is in a shadowy way yeah kind of vaguely under the soviet aegis that's what's fascinating it's the venn diagram it's the center of the venn diagram between the western and and the the soviet bloc um there the soviets do compete and there's there's a kind of

wonderful contrast between the first female gold medal winner that america has who's margaret abbott we talked about in the previous one who wins by accident basically wins by accident was studying um art and this kind of glorious photo of her competing she's got long white skirts she's got a hat um you know kind of gloriously edwardian look um the first um woman to win a gold medal for the soviet union um is uh nina ramashkova who wins the women's discus and she is an alumna of the physical training faculty of the stravropol pedagogical institute and she very very much looks like it okay you you could not imagine her in a kind of hat you know ivory hat looking like helena bonhamham Carter she wouldn't go punting she would not go punting she'd sink the punt I think it's fair to say um she's solid muscle yeah um and I guess that that

that kind of establishes a template for the Soviet American rivalry that will run right the way up till I guess you know the boycotted Olympicslympics of the 80s yeah that's right moscow and la and i think the soviet union so the soviet union already had for a few years i had a history of sport as propaganda sport as a um as a vehicle for proclaiming i think the key thing is proclaiming the modernity of the soviet system so they'd sent for example football teams to tour um england and they had played you know what was perceived to be a more collective more advanced more progressive game and i think this sort of i mean people talk about homo sovieticus the sort of soviet man and the idea was that soviet man indeed soviet woman particularly soviet woman as it became um

were that they were almost kind of supermen and superwomen that thanks to the appliance of soviet science they would outstrip all their western competitors and this became an obsession as we know for the sort of soviet and then of course the east german czechoslovakian hungarian so on authorities so this is a problem for the olympic committee isn't it that basically that kind of corinthian ideal doesn't play in a communist society and the soviets have absolutely no compunction about training people for four years yeah solely with the aim of getting them i mean ironically they're they're kind of more like the very aristocratic figures in the ancient olympics they are and they're technically amateurs aren't they i mean they're always these

eastern european and and russian competitors are are technically amateurs they may they might be in the army or they might be you know this sort of conversation teachers yeah a policeman or something like this but of course the reality is they're spending all their time training and indeed being pumped with as as certainly by the 70s being pumped with chemicals um to sort of bend the rules and give them that give them the advantage so how much is that being done a lot yeah a lot that's a massive program that's a particularly i mean east germany is the most famous example east germany by the 70s and 80s you know i think they have this colossal state sponsored doping program and of course there are you know um all these horror stories about particularly east german women who are basically forced to take all these treatments whether they

want to or not really if you want to succeed and for these germans is that because they are competing as you know one half of of course of what had been is that because they are competing as one half of what had been Germany? So they are targeting... And so when the West Germans get the games at Munich, I guess that must kind of turbocharge it. Yeah, absolutely. I think absolutely. And I think by the 80s, it had become almost a parody of itself. I mean, I can remember as a boy watching the East German athletes and the sort of world weariness in the BBC commentators' tones.

Actually, another hammer is chucked five miles. Yeah, exactly. By somebody who looks like the Incredible Hulk or something. I mean, it's easy to laugh about it, but there were real tragic stories kind of behind it because, of course, they didn't really have a choice because if you chose to opt out, if you were identified as talented and you chose to opt out of the system the consequences

for your family would could be very grave you know you would miss out you'd move down the housing list miss out on lots of perks of various kinds be identified as sort of skeptics or enemies of the state so the pressure on these women in particular was absolutely intense. And that's not just in East Germany. I mean, you read the stories about people like Nadia Comaneci, for example, in Romania. I mean, Nadia Comaneci was put under immense pressure in the 70s and early 80s because she was the absolute symbol of Ceausescu's regime around the world. And so she had very, it was just kind of stifling but chachescu is i mean

he's slightly he's slightly kind of at a remove isn't he so the the americans boycott moscow because the soviets have just invaded afghanistan and then and then when the soviets boycott los angeles chusescu does go. Well, because Romania is in a slightly semi-detached... I mean, Romania is having its cake and eating it. Not as much as Yugoslavia, but Romania is having its cake and eating it. So it's trying to get currency from the West. It's sort of positioning itself.

I mean, this is one of the reasons Ceausescu was decorated by the Queen. Remember, he comes to Buckingham Palace, I think, and is given some sort of order he stays in the bedroom doesn't he um he is because Romania is trying to position itself as the cuddly face of eastern European communism which obviously ironically it completely and utterly wasn't um but yeah so Ceausescu is exactly he's trying to steer this and so do you have a sense of how important it was to to both america and the soviet union yes massive each other in the medal tables it's absolutely massively important so the soviet union is very successful in the 50s and 60s um and and there are there are there are confrontations starting right away so the the classic early confrontation is in Melbourne in 1956.

So December 1956, that's after the serious crisis, but it's also crucially after the Red Army's repression in Hungary of the Hungarian uprising. And there's this landmark water polo match between Hungary and the USSR. So the Hungarians are very good at water polo i mean who would i guess they've got their tradition of baths haven't they in budapest maybe that's why they're so good at each other yeah um so the hungarians i think are the reigning champions and they've been training for ages and they have this match um it's sort of a quarterfinal or

something i can't remember exactly so it's de 56th, they have this match with the Russians. It's called the Blood in the Water match, that's how it's gone down. Because there was so much fighting at the end, one of the Hungarians, a guy called Ervin Zador, is punched or elbowed. He takes his eye off his Russian opponent for a second to ask the referee something. And the next thing he knows, his nose has been broken and there's blood pouring

from his face. The crowd, which was mainly Hungarian sort of Hungarian Australians they start shouting and a lot of them start spitting at the Soviet players and it ends in this massive punch up.

The Hungarians win 4-0. And who wins? The Hungarians win. And they win the gold medal, I think. But a lot of their players defect, including the guy who was bloodied, Irvin Saddle. He ends up being a water polo coach in California, bizarrely. Wow. So, yeah, so right there you have the absolute... I mean, that's one story.

Probably the other very famous... The ice hockey. The ice hockey match. The Miracle on Ice. So when is that? That's 1980, I think it is. that probably the other very famous the ice hockey ice hockey match the miracle on ice late when is that that's 1980 i think it is um so that's played okay so that's before the the americans have boycotted is it before the moscow summer games so yes i think it's the beginning of 1980 if i remember right the winter olympics i mean this if i'm wrong listeners will correct me um and of course it's amateur so the people who are playing in the

united states team are not professional ice hockey players they're not the big stars from the nhl the soviets always win um and february 1980 producer is telling us february 1980 i feel very proud of myself um uh and the soviets yeah they always win and this time they don't and it's in front of this incredibly partisan american crowd and these amateurs i think they're basically college kids they win and it's this incredible shock um and actually that moment is probably the moment where you see the you know you can trace the l the spirit of the LA Games four years later, that the turbocharged American patriotism from the miracle on ice in Lake Placid, because there you suddenly have, because of course America doesn't get to play other countries.

This is one reason I think why the Olympics matter in America far more than they do in, let's say, Britain or European countries, because Americans don't get to play other countries very often in international sport. Because, of course, their own sports, they're the only people that play them. Dominic, you're not allowed to say that or you'll get in trouble. Well, other people do play basketball, fine. We've got the basketball-ophiles who bombarded us with demented tweets last time. But American teams don't play international teams, do they?

I mean, in basketball very often. So that's why... Well, they do occasionally play Iran at football. They do. They do. Yes, they do. So they won out. Anyway, so this is all...

Yeah, no, I get that. Bit of a sort of rambling. So on the Cold War theme, so then you've got Moscow 1980. And Moscow 1980 is where it becomes... where the boycotts obviously start. And you know the weird thing about that, Tom, is this is Jimmy Carter's wheeze. You know, the Russians have invaded Afghanistan. But it was, I mean, I'm not saying this as a sort of, I mean, I'm not a sort of Cold War dove or anything. But I mean, it was a complete overreaction by Carter

to boycott the Moscow Games, actually. Was it for kind of to look strong? I think a lot of it was to look strong. He was perceived as weak. The election was coming against Ronald Reagan when Reagan was banned. I mean, Afghanistan was already a Soviet client state. So the sort of rhetoric around the Soviet invasion

of Afghanistan was pretty inflated actually and and is that why um say britain went well that's just thatcher um put enormous pressure on the british athletes not to go but she there was a you know politics doesn't get involved with sport the british government couldn't legally prevent them from going. They put it, I mean, people, there was enormous furore in the newspapers. I mean, I've written about this in my last, most recent book in my series on Britain. And it's absolutely fascinating going through.

But there was a real sense of debate, actually. So even in very sort of anti-communist newspapers, the Times, let's say, or the Daily Express, the letters pages, the editorial columns, they would often give views for and against and people would be the sports journalists in particular were adamant that it would be really unfair in the athletes not to go and the athletes themselves generally wanted to go um i think daily thompson was asked about it said he didn't give a damn about that was his they were his words he was great he said i don't give a damn about that was his they were his words he was great he said i don't give a damn

about the russian invasion of afghanistan i'm going to get the wing gold um at one point douglas heard who was minister of state at the foreign office he goes for a meeting with peter ko sebastian ko's trainer and tries to persuade him that seb shouldn't go to moscow and peter goes like you know we're going um the people who don't go are amusingly and entertainingly the people who who don't go who are the people who precisely the people who you would assume would be the most right wing because they have gone to private schools so the equestrians don't go um so no dressage there's no dressageage. And the yachting fraternity refused to go to Moscow. But everybody else goes.

And obviously, I mean, British fortunes, by the way, Britain had performed abysmally in the Olympics in the 70s. And we sort of clambered a little bit off the canvas. Because that's the Steve... Yvette and Sebastian Coe. They beat each other at each other's specialism. Daley Thompson wins gold in the decathlon, and Alan Wells wins gold in the 100 metres.

So for Britain, this is a great sort of hurrah, hurrah, because the West Germans aren't there. The Americans and the Canadians and the Japanese aren't there. But when they all come home, they don't get decorated initially mrs thatcher does not recommend them for medals and actually ko ends up a tory mp right he does he does um william haig's judo instructor he well when william haig goes down the log flume wearing his baseball cap says haig on it uh as aficionados of william haig will know that this disastrous photo opportunity after he became tory leader in the 1990s he goes down the log flume sebastian

co is just behind him and the log flume really pointed out is it every anyway but listen we remember sebastian co for all the wrong things they remember him for the olympic golds but not for the log flume and it's not right okay but just just sticking to the uh the cold war rather than to the career of william haig they both are equally important yeah um the the soviets response to the american yeah ridiculous they then boycott la no but no but but their initial plan is to wipe the floor with the americans so they start pumping in more drugs more training yes yeah that's that's their plan tom's all over this as you can tell i'm all over it well this is your period i don't know i mean the spartans i'll be fine but but it's it's a late boycott is it i

haven't i haven't followed anyway this is quality podcast so then the american well what happens is moscow is a terrible games moscow is very drab um the security is suffocating a lot of the city has been evacuated so basically children have been taken out of moscow the foreign press corps basically write home and say this is awful because a lot of them for the don't forget there's a lot of people who you you know, people don't go to Moscow by and large in the 1960s and 70s. So all these people who normally report on sport, so they spend their time at Crystal Palace watching kind of slightly obscure athletics events. They go to Moscow and they're writing copy that's appearing in Western newspapers saying, God, this place is awful. You know, it's this sort of this image that we have of the third Rome, you know, the capital of this superpower.

But in the 70s, everybody thinks represents modernity. So the idea that we have, you know, that I remember growing up with, that Moscow is kind of cues and shabbiness. Yeah. Does that come from the journalists? A lot of it, I think, does come from 1980 because these are people who are,

there'd always been a sense of sort of it being a forbidding sort of dark citadel, but the sort of sense of just how awful it is. A lot of that, I think, does come from the 1980 game, certainly in the British papers. And the sense that it's, oh, actually, because so much in the 70s of the talk about the Cold War had been that the Russians were winning

because, of course, America's been humiliated in Vietnam. They've been Watergate. The Russians are penetrating Africa and so on. And then people go to the Moscow Games. They're like, oh, God, this is actually terrible. So that's interesting because that, in which case, that's an example of totalitarian Olympics not working. Gone wrong.

Yeah, exactly right. i think that's exactly right i don't think anyone comes home from moscow and says oh the soviets are just as powerful as i had imagined they were i think they come home and completely the opposite expression and that of course nicely tees up los angeles which is just the ultimate expression of kind of reagan america yeah it is yeah um so immense corporate you know that's stars and stripes corporate sponsorship take turned up to 11 um you know it's it's happening in california and sunshine the american news media goes completely berserk and basically doesn't mention the fact that anybody else is participating in the games at all which really shocks a lot of even sympathetic kind of british

and german and so on observers because they can't believe how how ultra patriotic the americans are about their 84 games it's carl lewis's games and it's also the games at which um daily thompson great hero of mine perhaps slightly disgraces himself by baiting carl lewis about the possibility that carl lewis is gay do you remember that yeah i do so he went he walks around with a t-shirt on saying um is the world's second best athlete gay and when people ask him about to the press conference he says oh in england gay means happy yeah i do maybe remember but carl lewis carl lewis i mean he was photographed wearing stilettos wasn't he was he i don't know where did you hear that from daily thompson probably i don't know i think we should i think we should have um we should have a break here i'm just going to check

that to make sure that i haven't i think it'd be great if this i mean if this podcast is to be cancelled i think being cancelled because you've slandered Carl Lewis. Well, it's not a slander to West Littles. I think he wants the West Littles. I think he wants the West Littles. That's fine. But I just want to make sure that's right. So let's have a break.

I will go and check that. The Davey Thompson of historical podcasting, Tom Holland. And I think that when we come back, we should look at TV. Well, we've got TV, but we've also got some very dark chapters we haven't talked about mexico and munich in particular okay so let's look at that when we come back okay all right bye-bye i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A,

we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The rest is history uh tom holland i believe you have something you want to say to the lawyers i do okay so yes um that subliminal memory that was flashing around in my mind of of carl lewis in stilettos is right so i i it's not a false memory it was part of an advertising campaign by the italian tire company pirelli and i'm reading this off the internet um it was taken

by american celebrity photographer annie leibovitz and it showed him wearing a pair of red stiletto heels okay so i was right and i guess you may be making play with the maybe no i don't think carl lewis is that i don't think he's i don't see that knowing i'm not sure he's that ironic okay um i mean i remember do you remember the uh ben johnson carl lewis that was titanic when i was at school i mean everybody so wasn't it that was sold everybody had a preference either lewis or johnson i remember johnson winning and being delighted because i wanted him to win and then and then yeah the and that's probably it's up there with so we should say for people who don't know that i mean ben johnson was absolutely up to his eyeballs in yeah which

i think frankly i'm not defending ben johnson all of it was true pretty generally um for a lot of athletes not all of them maybe but for a lot of athletes in the 70s and in the 80s well 90s actually um is this is this legally well i didn't i said not all of them so if you're listening to this and you're an olympic athlete i don't mean the 70s 80s and i definitely don't please don't sue us i mean the other competitors i mean the ones who did yeah but obviously at that point by the Ben Johnson scandal was the biggest scandal probably in the biggest doping scandal in Olympic history and you know well has meant that ever apart from Thomas Hicks in the the Strictly yeah and the egg whites and the

brand yes well um yeah that's like the asterix in the olympic games taking that's at the time but but i mean apart from i mean the ben johnson scandal is a sort of supposedly a dark chapter in the history of the olympics but but i mean it isn't really compared with some of the dark chapters brilliant segue so yeah i thought brilliantly i thought that was superb i'm glad you like that i was like dressage. Even as I was doing it. The judges would give you 10 points for that. Had I been a competitor in 1980, I wouldn't have had the chance

to do that in Moscow. That was magnificent. You've podiumed with that. Thank you. So the dark moments. So I think there are three games in a row pretty much that are bad. The least bad of them is the last one, which is Montreal, and that's bad just for ludicrous overspending.

So in that one, Montreal in 1976, Canadian listeners, I know we have some Canadian listeners, and they will definitely remember this, the costs overrun by 720%. Montreal went a billion dollars into debt, and they didn't pay off the debt for the stadium until 2006 I mean just mind-boggling um and you know about the the mayor Jean Drapeau yes the mayor so he said a city can no more lose money on the Olympics than a man can have a baby

right well and couldn't say that now he also um he he basically compared the uh the olympic stadium in montreal to the acropolis but it still doesn't work the olympic stadium in montreal has never worked it has this fancy retracting roof they've had to repair well so i put this out i i put this out on twitter and uh canadian journalist james many replied if memory serves the roof of the acropolis was blown to bits after the ottomans used it as an ammunition dump i think it was actually the venetians wasn't it um but anyway the point is is accurate our roof fell in because of snow yeah so there was incredibly crooked the main construction union had links to organized crime and basically it's bankrupted effectively bankrupted montreal and the city took decades and decades to recover. So that's bad. So that's bad, but not as bad as obviously the two previous games.

So Mexico, 1968. Mexico is a troubled country in the late 60s, huge student protests, a lot of police repression. And just before the games start, the Mexican government basically shoots and kills between that probably between three and four hundred student protesters in the center of mexico city and the people who are most responsible for doing this are a special battalion called the olympia battalion of the mexican security forces who wear special they were in plain clothes they wear white

gloves so that the other police went far in them, they were in plain clothes, they wear white gloves, so that the other police weren't firing them, and they set up machine guns and basically machine gunned the crowds. That's not good preparation. And there's a lot of talk about, you know, can the Games go ahead under these circumstances? And the IOC president, who's an American, called Avery Brundage. Brundage was a terrible man. He was the man who had insisted that the Americans not boycott the Berlin Games in 1936.

He had a history of anti-Semitism and racist remarks and stuff. Brundage is asked, did you see this? And he says, no, I was at the ballet. So the Mexican Games go ahead. And then, of course, the Mexican Games... So this guy Brundage, that's the context for the really famous image from the Mexican games. The Black Power salute.

The Black Power salute. Yeah, Tommy Smith and John Carlos. So that, again, is a terrible story. So they do the Black Power salute. And, of course, they do it in the context. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in 1968 in America. America is in the Vietnam War. It is wracked by protests.

The civil rights movement, the optimism is beginning to leak away. There have been race riots. It's all very troubled. And actually, against that background, merely doing a salute and a glove during the playing of your anthem doesn't really seem like such an incendiary.

So Tommy Smith wins. It's 200 metres, right? I think it's 200 metres. There are three of them on the podium. John Carlos comes third and there's an Australian who comes second and he joins in. Well, he wears a badge. Peter Norman. He wears it.

OK. It's actually a nice story. He is the one who suggests to them about the glove, that they wear a glove each, because tell him they want to do this it's actually a story that reflects really well on all three of them they say to him we we feel really strongly about this we want to do this protest and they say to him do you believe in god and he says yes because he's a member of the salvation army salvation army background and and and they say well that's why we want to do it and he says oh i'll support you you know and um they are basically banned from the olympics forever by avery brundage american head of the ioc and peter norman there's a lot of controversy about this in

australia whether it's for sporting reasons or for other reasons but he's not and he doesn't get into the australian team for the next Olympics. A lot of people have always thought that was because he was basically blacklisted because he had shown support for these two guys. So that's a very, I mean, that is the most famous image by far, one of the most famous images in Olympic history, but it's one from which the Olympic movement emerges with no credit whatsoever, I would say.

Yeah, there's a kind of sense of slight sense of, well, I mean, considerable sense of moral bankruptcy. Yeah. Hanging over the Olympics throughout the 70s and 80s. Well, Munich is a shocking. And this is the worst. Yeah. It's a terrible story, really.

So for listeners, most listeners will know this story. But for those who don't, Septemberember the 5th in munich in west germany um it's germany's first chance to host the olympics after 1936 that matters enormously to the germans um that they present this sort of new face of germany to the world and um eight members of the palestinian black september organization they invade the olympic village they take uh 11 israeli athletes and officials hostage right at the beginning they kill two of them um a wrestling coach and a wrestler uh they kill and torture them really horribly i mean it's a terrible story um they

and so this is in the context of the incredible you know the anti-semitism that had stayed in the 36 games yeah as well it could so from the perspective of the olympics it could not be a worse story right i mean because it's a reminder you can't help think back to 1936 yeah um but you know the the sort of adage about politics and sport don't mix is comprehensively demolished by this by this incident the terrorists then go with the hostages to um a military airport and there the the Germans launch this disastrous botched operation to rescue the hostages, which basically ends up with everybody being killed.

All the hostages are killed. And I think all the hostage takers. And this is the... Some of them get away because then... Yes, of course. Not all the hostage takers. They get hunted down. Right.

Israel has this operation wrath of god as it's called mossad there's a brilliant book about this by a guy called i think it's called ronan bergman called rise and kill first or rise and strike first or something which i reviewed a few years ago really riveting read and of course steven spielberg's film munich um it's all about this about the hunt for the for the people who planned it and so on um and again avery brundage is there uh and he says you know the politics and sport can't mix the games will go on so in other words he's perfectly happy to have the games in hitler's um berlin and he thinks the game should continue despite the fact that one of the teams has just seen 11 of its members murdered.

And you sort of think, well, if he's not going to stop it then or postpone it or do something, would you ever stop it? And I guess his answer would have been no, he never would. So, yeah, that's a... Go on, Tom. I mean, that taint. Berlin Olympics, Munich, the greed, the Cold War rivalries. I mean, I think it is a kind of permanent shadow over any idea that the Olympics are a festival of... I completely agree.

So when you mentioned in the last podcast, the first one we did on this, on the modern Olympics, about David Goldblatt's book, and I was looking back at David Goldblatt's book, and he wrote an article just before the current Olympics, the Tokyo Olympics, in which he basically argues, he says, you know,

the Olympics should stop. They should be wound up. And he gives a series of facts, actually, which are, you know, we've seen in our recent sort of lifetimes um los angeles seoul barcelona i mean barcelona is probably the one great success story because it really raised barcelona's reputation massive yeah the city because the city is the star of that right yeah and also catalonia i think a big boost catalan nationalism but also i mean it's the one that after the end of the Cold War, so the old Soviet-American rivalry is slightly put to bed.

I think that's right, and I think it's probably the least tainted. Yeah. So then you have Atlanta, 1996. I mean, awful, an awful game. It's a pipe bomb attack, but also it should never have been given to Atlanta. Everybody agrees that. The organisation was poor. It was a complete sellout to Coca-Cola, and it should never have been given to Atlanta. Everybody agrees that. The organisation was poor. It was a complete sell-out to Coca-Cola.

It should have been Athens. Should because it's centenary. I think the Sydney games are pretty good. But then Athens is... I mean, it's a financial disaster, isn't it? Just before the financial crisis as well. You think what happened to Greece just a few years later that they've blown all this money on the games it's kind of lent and car i mean kind of like the the ioc are like dealers they're like the kind of

mafia encouraging people to get into gambling debt absolutely so that then they can take over their sports shop or something i mean that's what it felt like with athens yeah that greece got horribly stiffed basically i mean the beijing games were obviously an advert for the chinese regime no doubt no one would sort of dispute that the london games a magnificent monument to blairism well we loved i mean everybody in britain loved the london games because we did really well because we made it we like the queen or going to be a to a helicopter was in it um but it was very expensive and it left it didn't increase participation sport which everybody claimed it would and it left london with i'm not going to say the olympic park is a white elephant but it is a bit of a white elephant um you know there's there's good news for west ham

right yeah it's yeah it's not as much of a wise elephant as the Montrealers. Yeah, if you're a hammer. Though they hate their new stadium. They can't stand their new stadium. Everyone's unhappy. Yeah. And then what was the last one? Rio.

I mean, Rio, terrible story. You know, they didn't... Just reading here from David Goldblatt's article, Rio did not build a single community sporting facility on the back of these Olympic Games. And they moved, they forced out 60,000 people to move out of their homes to make way for Olympic infrastructure.

I mean, that's kind of, I think that's pretty indefensible, actually. So these, I mean, the stats are extraordinary. Goldblatt says, no modern games with the exception of Barcelona has ever raised a host city's rate of economic growth, level of skills and employment, tourist income or productivity.

It's a complete myth that they raised the level of sporting participation in their country. Actually, lots of people watch the Olympics on TV, but they don't then emulate the... I mean, that's the sort of claim that these people... You know, Olympians... I mean, I admire these athletes tremendously who've dedicated their lives to the pursuit of glory and all the rest of it. But the idea that they inspire others is dubious at best.

I mean, they may inspire some. Kid in the ghetto, dreaming of dressage. That's always. Yeah. I mean, who didn't grow up in a slum dreaming of synchronized swimming? That's always the claim isn't it but um i think the truth of it is a lot has always been much darker and um and we shouldn't kid i think it has right from the beginning because you think about all the you know the human zoos yeah and all that stuff it's kind of monstrous really um so this is all very bleak isn't it and if it's not bleak enough i'll tell you this his there's an extraordinary story about a a japanese i came across a japanese

marathon runner called kokichi subayara i'm sorry if i've pronounced that wrong oh is this the is this the one in so he's a tokyo or stockholm it's a tokyo i think it is 64 um but it might be the one you're thinking of so he comes third in the marathon. He'd hoped to win. And he ends up walking. You know, he's shut up. I mean, God, he's been going for 26 miles. It's fair enough.

He basically stumbles across the line in front of his home crowd, and he's very disappointed. And he says, I have committed an inexcusable blunder in front of the Japanese people. I have to make amends by running and hearing the anthem in our next Olympics. So for the next three years, this poor guy trains like a demon to get into the next Olympics when he can redeem,

as he sees it, the shame of having finished third in front of his home crowd. He has a back injury just before the Olympics, so he can't go. So do you know what he does i mean you can probably guess he leaves himself yeah he kills himself yeah okay so yeah that is a that is a downer but there's a slightly more inspiring one which i because i think it would be it would be remiss to dwell just on the dark side because clearly there is a kind of incredible

inspiration yeah um people watch it because they find it moving and inspiring to be honest i'm a complete hypocrite because when we win when the commentator says dominic dominic when the commentator says your your your columns for the daily mail i know there was evidence for your when the commentator says oh this lad from hunstanton his family watching back home i mean i'm in kind of floods of tears it's it's i'm a pitiful figure okay so this anecdote i'm about to tell is going to be a terrible anecdote because i can't really remember it okay and i was i was told it years ago by i think david owen great sports journalist coverage not the sdp not the sdp no no the sports editor of the ft okay and

somebody mentioned it also on twitter a couple of days ago but it's in one of the scandinavian olympics and i'm guessing it's it's either stockholm i think it's stockholm um there's a marathon there's a japanese runner he realizes midway through that he's not going to win a medal and he's so ashamed that he stops the race and he just goes home without telling anyone so nobody knows where he's gone so he just vanishes yeah and he's gone back to tokyo and yeah and after the war the um the swedes kind of discover this happened and they invite him back to Sweden to complete the course, and he does it. And everyone turns out in Stockholm to cheer him over the finish line.

That's a lovely story. So that is a good story. That's a bit like the Derek Redmond story. I mean, people who know about athletics will definitely know this story. So there was a very accomplished British runner at the beginning of the 1990s called Derek Redmond, he was played by injuries and he got himself fit I think just for Barcelona

and he was in the final and he had a really good expectation of a medal and I'm sure you have seen it Tom but his hamstring goes halfway round and he slows to a crawl a stagger,

and a man runs onto the field. Yeah. A sort of older, quite sort of large black man, and the organisers are trying to sort of hold him back, but it turns out this man is his dad, and his dad helps him across the line, and it's this incredibly sort of, even the Olympic sort of hold him back but it turns out this man is his dad and his dad helps him across the line and it's this incredibly sort of even the even the olympic sort of the official olympic website makes mention of this you know because obviously he comes in behind everybody else but

his dad is determined that he his son will finish and he basically helps him so actually you know it's it's very like the story of ferranique that we talked about in the first of our our trilogy the mother who helps her son yeah to to win the boxing of the wrestling i can't remember which it is and she's not wearing any underwear and they reckon she's not wearing any underwear and the penalty is officially that she'd be chucked off a cliff yeah that didn't happen to the redmond the ioc decided that she they'll spare her. So very similar. That's a very nice moment on which to end. And one last note on which to end, Tom,

to return to the patriotic spirit which we began these two podcasts on, the modern Olympics. Do you know there's only one country that has won a gold medal in every single Summer Games? I'll give you one guess which one. Is it the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? It is.

It is. Well, and before we became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, of course, we won gold in the only cricket match in Paris, 1900. So we remain the gold medal winners in cricket, and I think that's a splendid note. We win the Equalinental Olympics every year. They're the real games.

Yeah. The Continental Olympics really it's a victory for them. Exactly. So well done them. Thanks very much for listening. We've got Sparta coming up haven't we? And lots of stuff about the Berlin Wall and nuclear weapons

and tons of interesting stuff so see you soon see you next time bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.