1968 Summer Olympics

Games of the XIX Olympiad
Host city Mexico City, Mexico
Nations participating 112
Athletes participating 5,516
(4,735 men, 781 women)
Events 172 in 18 sports
Opening ceremony October 12
Closing ceremony October 27
Officially opened by President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz
Athlete's Oath Pablo Garrido
Olympic Torch Norma Enriqueta Basilio de Sotelo
Stadium Estadio Olímpico Universitario
Summer:
<  Tokyo 1964 Munich 1972  >
Winter:
<  Grenoble 1968 Sapporo 1972  >

The 1968 Summer Olympics (Spanish: Juegos Olímpicos de Verano de 1968), officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Mexico City, Mexico, in October 1968.

These were the first Olympic Games to be staged in Latin America and the first to be staged in a Spanish-speaking country. They were also the first Games to use an all-weather (smooth) track for track and field events instead of the traditional cinder track.

The 1968 Games were the third to be held in the last quarter of the year, after the 1956 Games in Melbourne and the 1964 Games in Tokyo. The Mexican Student Movement of 1968 happened concurrently and the Olympic Games were correlated to the government's repression.

Host city selection

Opening ceremony of the 1968 Summer Olympic Games at the Estadio Olímpico Universitario in Mexico City

On October 18, 1963, at the 60th IOC Session in Baden-Baden, West Germany, Mexico City finished ahead of bids from Detroit, Buenos Aires and Lyon to host the Games.[1]

1968 Summer Olympics bidding result[2]
City Country Round 1
Mexico City  Mexico 30
Detroit  United States 14
Lyon  France 12
Buenos Aires  Argentina 2

Olympic torch relay

The 1968 torch relay recreated the route taken by Christopher Columbus to the New World, journeying from Greece through Italy and Spain to San Salvador Island, Bahamas, and then on to Mexico. American sculptor James Metcalf, an expatriate in Mexico, won the commission to forge the Olympic torch for the 1968 Summer Games.[3]

Highlights

Adolfo López Mateos, President of Mexico from 1958 to 1964 and first chairman of the Organization Committee of the 1968 Summer Olympics

Controversies

South Africa

South Africa was provisionally invited to the Games, on the understanding that all segregation and discrimination in sport would be eliminated by the 1972 Games. However, African countries and black American athletes promised to boycott the Games if South Africa was present, and Eastern Bloc countries threatened to do likewise. In April 1968 the IOC conceded that "it would be most unwise for South Africa to participate".[9]

Tlatelolco massacre

Responding to growing social unrest and protests, the government of Mexico had increased economic and political suppression, against labor unions in particular, in the decade building up to the Olympics. A series of protest marches in the city in August gathered significant attendance, with an estimated 500,000 taking part on August 27. President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz ordered the occupation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in September, but protests continued. Using the prominence brought by the Olympics, students gathered in Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco to call for greater civil and democratic rights and showed disdain for the Olympics with slogans such as ¡No queremos olimpiadas, queremos revolución! ("We don't want Olympics, we want revolution!").[10][11]

Ten days before the start of the Olympics, the government ordered the gathering in Plaza de las Tres Culturas to be broken up. Some 5000 soldiers and 200 tankettes surrounded the plaza. Hundreds of protesters and civilians were killed and over 1000 were arrested. At the time, the event was portrayed in the national media as the military suppression of a violent student uprising, but later analysis indicates that the gathering was peaceful prior to the army's advance.[12][13][14]

Black Power salute

Gold medalist Tommie Smith (center) and bronze medalist John Carlos (right) showing the raised fist on the podium after the 200 m race

On October 16, 1968, black American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the gold and bronze medalists in the men's 200-meter race, took their places on the podium for the medal ceremony wearing black socks without shoes and civil rights badges, lowered their heads and each defiantly raised a black-gloved fist as the Star Spangled Banner was played, in solidarity with the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. Both were members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Some people (particularly IOC president Avery Brundage) felt that a political statement had no place in the international forum of the Olympic Games. In an immediate response to their actions, Smith and Carlos were suspended from the U.S. team by Brundage and banned from the Olympic Village. Those who opposed the protest said the actions disgraced all Americans. Supporters, on the other hand, praised the men for their bravery.

Peter Norman, the Australian sprinter who came second in the 200 m race, also wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge during the medal ceremony. Norman was the one who suggested that Carlos and Smith wear one glove each. His actions resulted in him being ostracized by Australian media[15] and a reprimand by his country's Olympic authorities, who did not send him or any other male sprinters at all to the 1972 games (despite easily making the qualifying time).[16] When Australia hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, he was not invited to join other Australian medallists at the opening ceremony. In 2006, after Norman died of a heart attack, Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at Norman's funeral.[17]

Vera Cáslavská

In another notable incident, while standing on the medal podium after the balance beam event final, in which Natalia Kuchinskaya of the Soviet Union had controversially taken the Gold, Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská quietly turned her head down and away during the playing of the Soviet national anthem. The action was Čáslavská's silent protest against the recent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Her protest was repeated when she accepted her medal for her floor exercise routine when the judges changed the preliminary scores of the Soviet Larisa Petrik to tie with Čáslavská. While Čáslavská's countrymen supported her actions and her outspoken opposition to Communism (she had publicly signed and supported Ludvik Vaculik's "Two Thousand Words" manifesto), the new regime responded by banning her from both sporting events and international travel for many years, and made her an outcast from society.

Venues

Medals awarded

The 1968 Summer Olympic program featured 172 events in the following 18 sports:

Demonstration sports

The organizers declined to hold a judo tournament at the Olympics, even though it had been a full-medal sport four years earlier. This was the last time judo was not included in the Olympic games.

Calendar

All dates are in Central Time Zone (UTC-6)
  Opening ceremony  Event competitions   Event finals   Closing ceremony
Date October
12th
Sat
13th
Sun
14th
Mon
15th
Tue
16th
Wed
17th
Thu
18th
Fri
19th
Sat
20th
Sun
21st
Mon
22nd
Tue
23rd
Wed
24th
Thu
25th
Fri
26th
Sat
27th
Sun
Athletics





Basketball
Boxing

Canoeing
Cycling
Diving
Equestrian ● ●
Fencing
Field hockey
Football (soccer)
Gymnastics

Modern pentathlon
Rowing
Sailing
Shooting
Swimming







Volleyball
Water polo
Weightlifting
Wrestling
● ● ● ●

● ● ● ●
Total gold medals 2 5 6 9 13 10 17 20 14 5 12 8 16 34 1
Ceremonies
Date 12th
Sat
13th
Sun
14th
Mon
15th
Tue
16th
Wed
17th
Thu
18th
Fri
19th
Sat
20th
Sun
21st
Mon
22nd
Tue
23rd
Wed
24th
Thu
25th
Fri
26th
Sat
27th
Sun
October

Participating National Olympic Committees

Participants
Number of athletes per country

East Germany and West Germany competed as separate entities for the first time in at a Summer Olympiad, and would remain so through 1988. Barbados competed for the first time as an independent country. Also competing for the first time in a Summer Olympiad were British Honduras (now Belize), Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo (as Congo-Kinshasa), El Salvador, Guinea, Honduras, Kuwait, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Sierra Leone, and the United States Virgin Islands. Singapore returned to the Games as an independent country after competing as part of the Malaysian team in 1964. Suriname and Libya actually competed for the first time (in 1960 and 1964, respectively, they took part in the Opening Ceremony, but their athletes withdrew from competition.)

Participating National Olympic Committees

Boycotting countries

North Korea withdrew from the 1968 Games because of two incidents that strained its relations with the IOC. First, the IOC had barred North Korean track and field athletes from the 1968 Games because they had participated in the rival Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) in 1966. Secondly, the IOC had ordered the nation to compete under the name "North Korea" in the 1968 Games, whereas the country itself would have preferred its official name: "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".[19]

Medal count

These are the top ten nations that won medals at the 1968 Games. Host Mexico won 3 of each color of medal.

Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1  United States 452834107
2  Soviet Union 29323091
3  Japan 117725
4  Hungary 10101232
5  East Germany 99725
6  France 73515
7  Czechoslovakia 72413
8  West Germany 5111026
9  Australia 57517
10  Great Britain 55313
15  Mexico (host nation) 3339

See also

References

  1. IOC Vote History
  2. "Past Olympic host city election results". GamesBids. Archived from the original on 17 March 2011. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
  3. Dannatt, Adrian (2012-02-17). "James Metcalf: US sculptor who led a community of artists and artisans in Mexico". The Independent. Retrieved 2012-02-25.
  4. Litsky, Frank (2 October 2007). "Al Oerter, Olympic Discus Champion, Is Dead at 71". Retrieved 25 January 2017 via Proquest Newspapers.
  5. "Mexico 1968 Swimming - Results & Videos". International Olympic Committee. 2016-09-08. Retrieved 2017-02-13.
  6. "Count Jacques ROGGE - Comité Olympique et Interfédéral Belge, IOC Member since 1991". International Olympic Committee. 2017-01-17. Retrieved 2017-01-19.
  7. Guinness World Records - First summer Olympic Games to be televised in colour
  8. Espy, Richard (1981). The Politics of the Olympic Games: With an Epilogue, 1976-1980. University of California Press. pp. 125–8. ISBN 9780520043954. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  9. México 1968: Las Olimpiadas 10 días después de la matanza. ADN Politico (2012-08-08). Retrieved on 2013-07-03.
  10. 1968: Student riots threaten Mexico Olympics. BBC Sport. Retrieved on 2013-07-03.
  11. Werner, Michael S., ed. Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society & Culture. Vol. 2 Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997.
  12. Mexican students protest for greater democracy, 1968. Global Non-Violent Action Database. Retrieved on 2013-07-03.
  13. The Dead of Tlatelolco. The National Security Archive. Retrieved on 2013-07-03.
  14. Wise, Mike (5 October 2006). "Clenched fists, helping hand". The Washington Post. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
  15. Frost, Caroline (17 October 2008). "The other man on the podium". BBC. Archived from the original on October 20, 2008. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
  16. Flanagan, Martin (6 October 2006). "Olympic protest heroes praise Norman's courage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 9 November 2008.
  17. Grasso, John; Mallon, Bill; Heijmans, Jeroen (2015). "Chinese Taipei (aka Taiwan, Formosa, Republic of China) (TPE)". Historical Dictionary of the Olympic Movement (5th ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 114. ISBN 978-1-4422-4860-1.
  18. Grasso, John; Mallon, Bill; Heijmans, Jeroen (2015). "Korea, Democratic People's Republic of (North Korea) (PRK)". Historical Dictionary of the Olympic Movement (5th ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 316. ISBN 978-1-4422-4860-1.
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Preceded by
Tokyo
Summer Olympic Games
Mexico City

XIX Olympiad (1968)
Succeeded by
Munich
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