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Olympics lost its innocence in Munich
By Frank Fitzpatrick
Thirty years ago today, the Olympic Games lost their innocence.
And terrorism showed a chilling new ski-masked face as TV cameras caught a Black September gunman surveying the Olympic Village from the balcony of an apartment, where he and five other gunmen had slain two Israeli Olympic team members and were holding nine others hostage.
"The Games shut down and the tanks rolled," recalled Ted Nash of the Penn Athletic Club, a U. S. rowing coach at Munich. "Even the most hardened Olympic official was stunned and appalled. It was an absolute affront to humanity."
Hours after the hostage-taking, Penn State professor John Lucas, an Olympic historian and the university's one-time track and field coach, stood on a mound of earth overlooking the then-beseiged Village.
"We were staying in a ski village about 10 miles outside of Munich," Lucas, a resident of State College, Pa., recalled Wednesday. "When I heard what had taken place, I got on a train bound for Munich. It wasn't even dawn yet but I knew I had to be there.
"I saw that that hill provided quite a nice vantage point so I, and many others, climbed it. I remember asking a German fellow what this hill was. And he said, `It is a pile of rubble and it is about all that is left of old Munich after the bombardment of World War II.'
"I wondered if the Olympics, like the city of Munich itself, would rise again like a Phoenix from the ashes of this terrible incident."
Until that day, the Olympics had always been, perhaps naively, viewed as a haven from mankind's baser instincts. The Ancient Games had been marked by a truce among all competing nations and the tradition continued when the Games were reborn 1,500 years later.
"That's what made Munich even more terrible to comprehend, if that's possible," said Lucas. "I was angered and horrified by the imposition of violence into this spectacle of peace. The privacy and pacificness that had always marked the Games had been violated."
Word spread quickly and within the hour, television cameras _ thanks to the satellite technology that was being used for a first time at Munich Games _ carried images around the globe.
Soon, like Lucas, curious athletes, residents and tourists gathered outside the Village.
"I remember that the German government had bent over backwards trying not to appear too militaristic about security," Mike Staines of Radnor, Pa., a rower on the `72 U.S. Olympic team recalled in a 1996 interview. "By the time that event occurred, they weren't really checking passes or credentials too closely at the village.
"I think that we as Americans, and probably almost all the athletes there, were shocked and stunned by the violence," he said. "I was at Montreal in 1976, and the security increased dramatically. Fences with three levels of barbed wire encircled the village. There were policemen armed with machine guns everywhere."
The terrorists demanded that 231 Palestinian prisoners in Israel be released by noon that day or the athletes. Many athletes, particularly Jewish ones, were suddenly under armed guard. American swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals at those Games, was hidden in a hotel.
When all the hostages, terrorists and a West German police officer were killed in a botched rescue effort, ABC's Olympics anchor Jim McKay, a West Philadelphia native, delivered the news to a stunned TV audience: "Tonight our worst fears have been realized. They're all gone."
Despite the unprecedented tragedy, Olympic officials announced that following a 48-hour period of mourning, the Games would continue _ a decision met with widespread outrage.
A day later, the gates to Munich's Olympic stadium were thrown open for a solemn memorial service that drew 80,000 spectators and 3,000 athletes _ including the remainder of the Israeli team dressed in white yarmulkes and maroon blazers.
"It was a moving ceremony," said Lucas, who was among the 80,000. "But I think that today, with the benefit of seeing the event in retrospect, many people who felt strongly that the Games ought not to have continued, have changed their mind.
"They, like me, are glad that despite this ultimate violation of the spirit Games, the Olympics survive."
But in the aftermath of those mind-numbing 21 hours in Munich three decades ago, they were dramatically altered.
Security is now a major consideration. Athletes villages are now walled-off islands. And the notion that somehow, the evil in the world will observe a two-week holiday every few years is a tattered one.
"(Munich) was," said Staines, "the end of something."
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