1968 Olympics Mexico City
What are they saying?
Location
controversies altitude 2,300 m, 30% less oxygen first sex testing for women (steroids) ‘professional’ athletes (Soviet system) political problems within country political problems around the world
Political issues around the world Spring 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia assassination of Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy Vietnam civil rights movement in the U.S.
Political problems – Mexico City massacre at the Plaza of Three Cultures on Oct. 2, 1968 Official count – 35 killed Unofficial est. – 267 killed, wounded
Boycott? South Africa (apartheid) and Rhodesia Soviet Union and newly independent African nations (proxy wars) Threaten boycott Avery Brundage – “If participation in sport is to be stopped every time the politicians violate the laws of humanity, there will never be any international contests.”
potential American boycott? Dr. Harry Edwards, sociologist, San Jose St. University decision for each athlete to do their own thing
the image John Carlos Tommy Smith Peter Norman
Fosbury flop
Bob Beamon 29 ft. 1/2 inches22 3/4 inches
Mark Spitz
“Brundage did succeed in eliminating pictures of the black- power protest from the lavishly illustrated official report published by the USOC. When the Mexican organizing committee released a film in which Smith and Carlos appear, Brundage objected, “The nasty demonstration against the United States flag by negroes... Had nothing to do with sport...[It] has no more place in the record of the games than the gunfire” at the pregame riots. Coming from a man unbothered by the prominent appearance of Adolf Hitler in Leni Riefenstahl’s film Olympia, these were odd remarks. Indeed, one might argue that the gunfire provoked by social unrest was as important a part of Olympic history as the pigeons released to symbolize a world at peace. Allen Guttmann, The Olympics, 132.