| Host city | Munich, West Germany |
|---|---|
| Nations participating | 121 |
| Athletes participating | 7170 (6075 men, 1095 women) |
| Events | 195 in 23 sports |
| Opening ceremony | August 26 |
| Closing ceremony | September 10 |
| Officially opened by | President Gustav Heinemann |
| Athlete's Oath | Heidi Schüller |
| Judge's Oath | Heinz Pollay |
| Olympic Torch | Günther Zahn |
| Stadium | Olympic Stadium |
The 1972 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972.
The 1972 Summer Olympics were the second Summer Olympics to be held in Germany, after the 1936 Games in Berlin, which had taken place under the Nazi regime. Mindful of the connection, the West German Government were anxious to take the opportunity of the Munich Olympics to present a new, democratic and optimistic Germany to the world, as shown by the Games' official motto, "the Happy Games." The emblem of the Games was a blue solar logo (the "Bright Sun") by Hungarian artist Viktor Vasarely. The Olympic mascot, the dachshund "Waldi", was the first officially named Olympic mascot. The Games also saw the introduction of the now-universal sports pictograms designed by Otl Aicher. Soon, however, the killings of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian gunmen in an event known as the Munich massacre took center stage.
The Olympic Park (Olympiapark) is based on Frei Otto's plans and after the Games became a Munich landmark. The competition sites, designed by architect Günther Behnisch, included the Olympic swimming hall, the Olympics Hall (Olympiahalle, a multipurpose facility) and the Olympic Stadium (Olympiastadion), and an Olympic village very close to the park. The design of the stadium was considered revolutionary, with sweeping canopies of acrylic glass stabilized by metal ropes, used on such a large scale for the first time.
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Munich won its Olympic bid on April 26, 1966, at the 64th IOC Session at Rome, Italy, over bids presented by Detroit, Madrid, and Montreal.[1]
| 1972 Summer Olympics bidding results[2] | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | Country | Round 1 | Round 2 | |||
| Munich | West Germany | 29 | 31 | |||
| Madrid | Spain | 16 | 16 | |||
| Montreal | Canada | 6 | 13 | |||
| Detroit | United States | 6 | — | |||
The Games were largely overshadowed by what has come to be known as the Munich massacre. On September 5 a group of eight Palestinian guerrillas belonging to the Black September organization broke into the Olympic Village and took eleven Israeli athletes, coaches and officials hostage in their apartments. Two of the hostages who resisted were killed in the first moments of the break-in; the subsequent standoff in the Olympic Village lasted for almost 18 hours.
Late in the evening of September 5, the terrorists and their hostages were transferred by helicopter to the military airport of Fürstenfeldbruck, ostensibly to board a plane bound for an undetermined Arab country. The German authorities planned to ambush them there, but under-estimated the number of terrorists and were thus undermanned. During a botched rescue attempt, all of the Israeli hostages were killed. Four of them were shot, then incinerated when a Palestinian detonated a grenade inside the helicopter in which the hostages were sitting. The five remaining hostages were then machine-gunned by another terrorist.
All but three of the Palestinians were killed as well. Although arrested and imprisoned pending trial, the three PLO survivors were released by the West German government on October 29, 1972 in exchange for a hijacked Lufthansa jet. Two of those three were supposedly hunted down and assassinated later by the Mossad. Jamal Al-Gashey, who is believed to be the sole survivor, and is still living today in hiding in an unspecified African country with his wife and two children. The Olympic events were suspended several hours after the initial attack, but once the incident was concluded Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee president, declared that "the Games must go on". A memorial ceremony was then held in the Olympic stadium, and the competitions resumed after a stoppage of 24 hours. The attack prompted heightened security at subsequent Olympics beginning with the 1976 Winter Olympics.
The massacre led the German federal government to re-examine its anti-terrorism policies, which at the time were dominated by a pacifist approach adopted post-World War II. This led to the creation of the elite counter-terrorist unit GSG 9, similar to the British SAS. It also led Israel to launch an aggressive counterterrorism campaign known as Operation Wrath of God. The events of the Munich massacre were chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary, One Day in September. An account of the aftermath is dramatized in Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich.
See the medal winners, ordered by sport:
This is the medal table, these are the top ten nations that won medals at these Games (The host country is highlighted).
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Soviet Union | 50 | 27 | 22 | 99 |
| 2 | United States | 33 | 31 | 30 | 94 |
| 3 | East Germany | 20 | 23 | 23 | 66 |
| 4 | West Germany | 13 | 11 | 16 | 40 |
| 5 | Japan | 13 | 8 | 8 | 29 |
| 6 | Australia | 8 | 7 | 2 | 17 |
| 7 | Poland | 7 | 5 | 9 | 21 |
| 8 | Hungary | 6 | 13 | 16 | 35 |
| 9 | Bulgaria | 6 | 10 | 5 | 21 |
| 10 | Italy | 5 | 3 | 10 | 18 |
Eleven nations made their first Olympic appearance in Munich: Albania, Burkina Faso (as Upper Volta), Benin (as Dahomey), Gabon, North Korea, Lesotho, Malawi, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Swaziland, Togo.
Rhodesia's invitation to take part in the 1972 Summer Games was withdrawn by the International Olympic Committee four days before the opening ceremony, in response to African countries' protests against the Rhodesian regime. (Rhodesia did, however, compete in the 1972 Summer Paralympics, held a little earlier in Heidelberg.)[4][5]
| Preceded by Mexico City |
Summer Olympic Games Munich XX Olympiad (1972) |
Succeeded by Montreal |
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