1976 Summer Olympics

Games of the XXI Olympiad
Host city Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nations participating 92
Athletes participating 6,028 (4,781 men, 1,247 women)
Events 198 in 21 sports
Opening ceremony July 17
Closing ceremony August 1
Officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II
Athlete's Oath Pierre St.-Jean
Judge's Oath Maurice Fauget
Olympic Torch Stéphane Préfontaine
Sandra Henderson
Stadium Olympic Stadium

The 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and Los Angeles, which later hosted the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympic Games respectively. These were the first Olympic Games held in Canada, preceding the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Contents

Host city selection

The vote occurred on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, Netherlands. One blank vote was cast in the second and final round.[1] One factor favoring Montreal was that the IOC did not want the Summer games hosted in a superpower for fears of political backlash, which would be proven later on in the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984.[2]

1976 Summer Olympics bidding results[2]
City Country Round 1 Round 2
Montreal  Canada 25 41
Moscow  Soviet Union 28 28
Los Angeles  United States 17

Organization

Robert Bourassa, then the Premier of Quebec, first pushed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to advise Canada's monarch, Elizabeth II, to attend the opening of the games. However, Bourassa later became unsettled about how unpopular the move might be with sovereigntists in the province, annoying Trudeau, who had already made arrangements.[3] The leader of the Parti Québécois at the time, René Lévesque, sent his own letter to Buckingham Palace, asking the Queen to refuse her prime minister's request, though she did not oblige the premier as he was out of his jurisdiction in offering advice to the sovereign.[4]

Highlights

Venues

Montreal Olympic Park

Venues in Greater Montreal

Venues outside Montreal

Medals awarded

See the medal winners, ordered by sport:

Medal count

These are the top ten nations that won medals at these Games. Host country of Canada placed 27th with 11 medals total. To date, this is the only edition of the Summer Games where the host nation failed to win any gold medal.

Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 Soviet Union 49 41 35 125
2 East Germany 40 25 25 90
3 United States 34 35 25 94
4 West Germany 10 12 17 39
5 Japan 9 6 10 25
6 Poland 7 6 13 26
7 Bulgaria 6 9 7 22
8 Cuba 6 4 3 13
9 Romania 4 9 14 27
10 Hungary 4 5 13 22
27 Canada 0 5 6 11

Participating nations

Three nations made their first Summer Olympic appearance in Montreal: Andorra (which had had his overall Olympic debut a few months before in Innsbruck Winter Olympics), Antigua and Barbuda, Cayman Islands.

Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of athletes from each nation that competed at the Games.

^ WD: Athletes from Cameroon, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia competed on July 18–20 before these nations withdrew from the Games.

Boycotting countries

The following 28 countries boycotted the Games.[6] The boycott was due to the refusal of the IOC to ban New Zealand, after the New Zealand national rugby union team had toured South Africa earlier in 1976.[7][8] South Africa had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 due to its apartheid policies.

Zaire did not compete, but claimed financial causes rather than political.

Both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China boycotted the games over issues concerning the legitimacy of each other. In November 1976, the International Olympic Committee recognized the People's Republic of China as the sole legal representative. In 1979, the IOC began referring to the Republic of China as Chinese Taipei as a result of the Nagoya Resolution; this led to the Republic of China boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics outside of the US-led boycott that year.

Legacy

The Olympics were a financial disaster for Montreal, as the city faced debts for 30 years after the Games had finished. The Quebec provincial government took over construction when it became evident in 1975 that work had fallen far behind schedule; work was still under way just weeks before the opening date, and the tower was not built. Mayor Jean Drapeau had confidently predicted in 1970 that "the Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby", but the debt racked up to a billion dollars that the Quebec government mandated the city pay in full. This would prompt cartoonist Aislin to draw a pregnant Drapeau on the telephone saying, "Allo, Morgentaler?" in reference to a Montreal abortionist.

The Olympic Stadium was designed by French architect Roger Taillibert. It is often nicknamed The Big O as a reference to both its name and to the doughnut-shape of the permanent component of the stadium's roof, though The Big Owe has been used to reference the astronomical cost of the stadium and the 1976 Olympics as a whole. It has never had an effective retractable roof, and the tower was completed only after the Olympics. In December 2006 the stadium's costs were finally paid in full.[9] The total expenditure (including repairs, renovations, construction, interest, and inflation) amounted to C$1.61 billion. Today, despite its huge cost, the stadium is devoid of a major tenant, after the Montreal Expos moved in 2005.

The boycott by African nations over the inclusion of New Zealand, whose rugby team had played in South Africa that year, was a contributing factor in the massive protests and civil disobedience that occurred during the 1981 Springbok Tour of New Zealand. Official sporting contacts between South Africa and New Zealand did not occur again until after the fall of apartheid.

Australia's failure to win a gold medal led the country to create the Australian Institute of Sport.

With Montreal's own Canadiens winning the Stanley Cup the following year, Canada hosting an Olympics has been seen as a good omen to the NHL team in the host city the following year.[10] A year after Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, their Flames won the Stanley Cup.[10] The Vancouver Canucks hoped to continue this in the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, a year after Vancouver hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics.[10][11] However, they ended up losing to the Boston Bruins.[12]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ a b "Past Olympic host city election results". GamesBids. Archived from the original on March 17, 2011. http://www.webcitation.org/5xFvf0ufx. Retrieved March 17, 2011. 
  3. ^ Heinricks, Geoff (2000). Canadian Monarchist News (Toronto: Monarchist League of Canada) Winter/Spring 2000–01. 2001. Archived from the original on September 5, 2007. http://www.monarchist.ca/cmn/2001/opinion.htm. Retrieved July 5, 2009. 
  4. ^ "Politics > Parties & Leaders > René Lévesque's Separatist Fight > René, The Queen and the FLQ". CBC. http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-74-870-5019/people/rene_levesque/clip6. Retrieved July 5, 2009. 
  5. ^ "Fujimoto caps Japanese success", BBC, September 29, 2000
  6. ^ "Africa and the XXIst Olympiad" (PDF). Olympic Review. IOC. 1976. http://www.la84foundation.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1976/ore109/ore109h.pdf. Retrieved April 3, 2006. 
  7. ^ "The Montreal Olympics boycott | NZHistory.net.nz, New Zealand history online". Nzhistory.net.nz. http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/montreal-olympics-boycott. Retrieved October 21, 2008. 
  8. ^ "BBC ON THIS DAY | 17 | 1976: African countries boycott Olympics". London: News.bbc.co.uk. July 17, 1976. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/17/newsid_3555000/3555450.stm. Retrieved October 21, 2008. 
  9. ^ CBC News (December 19, 2006). "Quebec's Big Owe stadium debt is over". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2006/12/19/qc-olympicstadium.html. Retrieved October 21, 2008. 
  10. ^ a b c "Olympic history in Canucks' corner". NHL.com. National Hockey League. May 28, 2011. http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=564068&navid=mod-rr-headlines. Retrieved May 29, 2011. 
  11. ^ Morris, Jim (April 10, 2011). "Canucks look to re-write playoff history". Canadian Press. Yahoo! Sports. http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=capress-hkn_canucks_playoffs-6525589&print=1. Retrieved April 11, 2011. 
  12. ^ cbc.ca

References

External links

Preceded by
Munich
Summer Olympic Games
Montreal

XXI Olympiad (1976)
Succeeded by
Moscow