‘Smash them like guitars’ (2000)

On the eve of the men's 4x100m freestyle relay, American Gary Hall Jr stoked the rivalry with the Australian team by saying the US would “smash them like guitars”.
It was a curious simile to use, essentially positioning his foursome as the rock stars of the pool.

It meant the Americans had to match their talk on the water. They did not, as Aussie foursome Michael Klim, who broke the individual world record on his opening leg, Chris Fydler, Ashley Callus and Ian Thorpe broke the relay world record to beat the Americans, anchored by Hall Jr, by 0.19 seconds. The Australians, of course, celebrated on the pool deck by playing air guitars.

To his credit, Hall Jr was first to congratulate the winners and was surely basing his confidence on the fact America has never lost the event before.

He still finished with two golds in Sydney (50m freestyle and 4x100m medley) and five for his career, but it's the pre-meet hype quote that he is remembered for.

Amateur hour (1912)

American Jim Thorpe is arguably the most remarkable all-round sportsperson in history.  

He won the pentathlon and decathlon gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912 and was welcomed in glory. But Thorpe was cruelly stripped of the medals for breaking amateur regulations. 

Thorpe, of part American Native descent, was probably just another victim of racism. His offence against the Olympics' amateur regulations involved the very meagre pay of a semi-professional baseballer. 

American Football legend, major league baseballer and even a professional basketballer amongst many sports he excelled in, illness and poverty hit Thorpe’s later life. 

And justice eluded him, his Olympic medals only reinstated decades after his 1953 death at the age of 65. 

More blood in the water (1956)

The most (in)famous water polo match in history and one of the most vicious sporting matches of any type, the Hungarians chose the Melbourne Games to show the Russians just what they thought of their tanks rolling into Budapest.

Played in a febrile atmosphere just weeks after the Soviets invaded Budapest to violently suppress the anti-communist revolution, the match became a Cold War touchstone. It moved from physical altercation to altercation, with frequent stoppages for underwater headlocks, kicking, punching and grappling.

Hungary, the better team throughout the semifinal, were leading 4-0 as time was ticking away. It was then Ervin Zador, Hungary’s two-goal hero, was king hit by Valentin Prokopov and was hauled out of the pool with blood pouring from his head.

Spectators and Hungarian officials charged the Russian bench before security and police intervened. The match was called off.

“I [marked] Prokopov for the last few minutes, and I told him that he was a loser and that his family were losers and so on,” Zador was later quoted as saying. “There was no problem until I made a huge error… I shouldn’t have taken my eye off Prokopov. The next thing I saw, he had his full upper body out of the water and he was swinging at my head with an open arm.”

Hungary, without the injured Zador, would win the final 2-1 against Yugoslavia, but few remember that game.

A Quentin Tarantino-produced documentary about the match, Freedom’s Fury (2006), was narrated by Mark Spitz and received critical acclaim. The match is still celebrated in Hungary. The movie Szabadsag Szerelem, released also in 2006, the 50th anniversary of the Games, is a testimony to how its participants are viewed. Translated it means, Children of Glory.

Ali lights up Atlanta (1996)

The Champ was ailing, the Champ had a difficult relationship with the Olympics and the Champ was a Muslim in the Christian stronghold of America’s south.

In one of the most emotionally charged moments in Olympic history, the Champ, Muhammad Ali, steadied his right hand as his left tremored uncontrollably, lit the flame that opened the final Olympics of the 20th century.

It was a moment loaded with symbolism. A light-heavyweight gold medalist in Rome, Cassius Clay returned to his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, and to the same segregationist and racist attitudes he’d always encountered.

Infuriated at being refused service in a restaurant, Ali allegedly threw his medal into the Ohio River (though he has walked back on that particular legend when pressed).
What is not in doubt, however, is that Ali became a touchstone for the civil rights movement and the most famous sportsman on the planet during the course of his epic career. He was also left physically debilitated by his sport.

So it was a poignant moment when Ali, wracked by Parkinson’s, lit the flame.

When you think about the Atlanta Games you think about Michael Johnson and his gold shoes and the pipe bomb at the park, but most of all you think about the Champ.

Pipped by a fingernail: Phelps' photo finish (2008)

With 99 metres of the 100m butterfly done and dusted it appeared Michael Phelps’ quest to break Mark Spitz’ record of most gold medals at an Olympics was done.

Phelps was half a stroke behind Serbia’s Milorad Cavic and with six gold medals already sitting on his nightstand back at the Beijing athletes’ village, it seemed he’d be taking a silver to join them. However, as the two touched the wall and their times flashed up it read, ‘Phelps 50.58, Cavic 50.59.’

Remarkably, Cavic mistimed his reach for the wall and replays showed he’d missed out denying Phelps by a fingernail. One image showed that maybe it was a tie. Phelps went on to go one better than Spitz’ effort in Munich, 1972, with number eight the next day in the men’s 4x100m medley relay. 

Last July, The Ringer revisited the moment in an interview with Cavic in which he said:

A boxing farce in two parts (1988)

Violence, corruption, cheating – we bring you the boxing from Seoul.

With the absence of powerhouse Cuba, who boycotted the Olympics, many of the divisions were wide open and the host nation targeted them obsessively. It created an oppressive, heated atmosphere at the Jamsil Students’ Gymnasium. The conditions were ripe for controversy.

In a second-round bantamweight bout one of the tournament favourites, Byun Jung-il was matched against Bulgarian Aleksandar Hristov. New Zealand referee Keith Walker docked Byun two points for multiple instances of headbutting and he eventually lost the fight in a 4-1 decision. Walker was attacked by the Korean coaching delegation and a riot broke out in the crowd. He eventually fled the country, fearing for his safety.

For his part, Byun staged a sit-in in the ring for 67 minutes until organisers simply turned the lights out and left him there.

The Koreans would get a measure of revenge in the light-middleweight division. In one of the most one-sided gold medal matches ever staged, Roy Jones Jr toyed with Park Si-hun – he landed 86 punches to 32 – but somehow found himself down 3-2 on the cards. One judge admitted giving his card to the Korean to placate the crowd. Two of the judges were subsequently banned for life.

Derek Redmond tears up (1992)

As we might have mentioned at the top, triumph and disaster meet at such regular intervals at the Olympics both those imposters need some special sauce to stand out.

Derek Redmond was a live medal chance in the 400m, having won his quarterfinal and was well-placed in the semifinal before tearing his hamstring in the back straight. That in itself wasn’t a surprise: Redmond had to pull out of his heat 90 seconds before it started due to an Achilles tendon injury and all told had endured eight surgeries over his career. Perhaps sensing that he would never get another Olympic opportunity, Redmond decided to make this one last. Rising from his haunches he proceeded to hobble the rest of the distance in front of an increasingly appreciative crowd.

Suddenly a large man appeared from the crowd and brushed aside an official who attempted to halt his progress. Jim Redmond reached his son and reportedly said to him: “Son, you don’t have to do this.” To which Derek replied through uncontrollable sobbing: “Yes I do.”

Father and son reached the finish line in front of a now adoring crowd and despite the unwanted attentions of Olympic officials who clearly didn’t understand the “it’s-bigger-than-sport” story even as it unfolded in real-time in front of their eyes.
Close to 30 years on, the footage still has the capacity to move you.

The Age of the Boycott (1976-84)

Thanks, New Zealand Rugby.

Okay, not totally fair because Olympic boycotts had been around since 1936, when Spain refused to compete in Berlin and the 1956 Melbourne Games had seen several countries pull out for a variety of reasons, ranging from the USSR’s invasion of Hungary to the Suez Crisis.

Unquestionably, however, the arrogance of NZ Rugby ushered in the “golden age” of boycotts, when the All Blacks tour to Apartheid-era South Africa saw 26 African countries boycott Montreal (it would become 27 when Egypt pulled out three days after the Games started).

Among other things, it denied the sporting world a potential repeat of the Filbert Bayi-John Walker 1500m showdown that so electrified the Christchurch Commonwealth Games two years earlier.

Four years later in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 62 nations, led by the USA, boycotted the Moscow Games.

In what was widely seen as a tit-for-tat response, 14 mainly Eastern bloc countries boycotted Los Angeles, though China did return after a 32-year absence.

The boycott tide ebbed at Seoul four years later and subsequent Olympiads have been largely free from overt political acts of absenteeism, but New Zealand will always have its own infamous place as the instigators of the golden age of boycotts.

Soviet block: Sport's most infamous ending (1972)

The Americans celebrated winning gold, but the refs had a surprise for them…

The Cold War was still in full swing – a final between the two world heavyweights was far more than a mere medal match. 

The Americans, whose teams were made up of amateur collegiate players – were unbeaten in Olympic basketball and shooting for an eighth straight gold. 

But the Soviets, whose state sports programmes gave them an edge in the ‘shamateur’ era, caused a massive Munich boilover as the match ended in pandemonium. 

The bedlam included a Soviet-caused ruckus at the scorer’s table, a clock reset in the final seconds, a mystery hooter and all sorts of claims and counterclaims. It may be the most infamous ending in the history of sport. 

Bottom line: The Soviets triumphed 51-50, a long wonder pass setting up the winning basket for Alexander Belov as the final horn sounded again.

The Soviets were naturally ecstatic as the bitter Americans – who refused their silver medals – claimed they were robbed. While it is difficult to succinctly summarise the madness of those few seconds, it is difficult not to sympathise with their belief they were stitched up.

Within six years the great Belov was dead at the age of 26, from cancer.

Jesse Owens beats the Aryans (1936)

Anybody who thinks the modern Olympics came fully formed out of the mind of Pierre de Coubertin in 1896 probably hasn’t read a lot about the early events. They were largely homespun affairs, were often attached to other exhibitions and were a bit of a shambles.

That changed in Berlin 1936, when Germany’s ruling National Socialist Party used the event to showcase the militaristic discipline that it would so grotesquely demonstrate in a few years’ time.

They also planned to use it to confirm the widely held belief that the Aryans were the master race (they were not the first to do this: in 1904 the “Savage Olympics” were staged in St Louis alongside the actual Olympics and the World Fair to prove anthropologically “in quantitative measure the inferiority of primitive peoples”).

What a shock it was to see, then, a Black American, the son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, win four golds under the watchful eye of Adolf Hitler – and, importantly for his legacy, in front of the cameras of propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl – and dominate the discussion.

Owens was a global superstar, but it didn’t do him much good at home as he returned to a life of struggle, for many years taking races against animals and automobiles to make money.

The Munich tragedy (1972)

There had never been an Olympic story like it and hopefully never will be again.
The simple facts are these: Palestinian Black September militants broke into the Israeli lodgings at Munich’s Olympic village, killed two and took nine hostages. Having apparently negotiated safe passage to Cairo, five of the eight terrorists, all the hostages and a West German policeman were killed during a calamitous rescue attempt at Furstenfeldbruck, a Nato airbase.

There was nothing simple about this story, however, and its tentacles were far-reaching. It turned out that West German authorities were armed with startlingly accurate information about a planned attack but didn’t act on it; that security was inconceivably lax at the Village; and that the planning for the ambush at the airbase was fractured and chaotic.

Like many tragedies, it has contributed to the pop culture canon, with Academy award-winning documentary One Day in September, Sword of Gideon and Steven Spielberg’s Munich among the titles.