Учебно-дидактический материал «Through the History of the 22-nd Olympic Games»

 

Trough the History of the 22nd Olympic Games

 

THE PARTICIPANTS AND GUESTS OF THE GAMES SPEAK

Dr Mylnt Pethaung, leader of the Burmese delegation:

The Olympic Village is won­derful.

* * *

Louis Gulrandou-N'Diaye, Vice-President of the IOC (Ivory

Coast):

The international Olympic movement is always developing, as it should. It is not subor­dinated to the will of one per­son, and does not belong to one continent, people or race. It belongs to the young people of the entire world.

• * *

Brigitta Schmitz (FRG), head of the Secretariat of the Olym­pic Games in Munich and Mon­treal, General Consultant for the 1974 Asian Games in Teheran: It isn't really worth talking about the organizers of the boy­cott. The campaign was initiated by one person — President Car­ter — as a lever for the coming presidential elections in the United States in November. It was hh personal initiative and he, in launching this campaign, only had his own ends in mind. I am certain that the overwhelm­ing majority of athletes who are not in Moscow because the per­sonal interests of one man de­manded it, wanted very much to come here.

Katherine Davidson (Great Britain), teacher from London, a tourist:

I was struck by the splendour ol (he second part of the opening ceremony: the performance ol athletes from different sports clubs, the young gymnasts from the children's sports schools, grandiose dancing numbers.... It was a pity that our athletes weren't among the other national teams, so colourful and beautiful, which marched around the track

* * *

Rene Frank, President of the International Hockey Federation:

The hockey tournament is being held at the highest organizational and technical level. I have I no complaints.

* * *

Mohammed Abbas All, head of the Syrian delegation at the International Youth Camp:

One gets the impression that all the Soviet people regard the Olympics as a personal affair.

* * *

Felix Imadiyt (Nigeria), track-and-field athlete:

The Olympic hosts not only made suje that training condi­tion were excellent, but also created good facilities for rest and recreation. We have no problems and there is nothing to get in the way of out prepar­ing tnlly for these great com­petition*.

* * *

Onotie Ramirez (Nicaragua), boxer:

I'm taking part in the Olympics and it is wonderful!
* * *

Anselmo Lopez (Spain), Gen­eral Secretary of the NOC:

I have no complaints against the management of the Olympic Village. The presence of the security service almost goes un­noticed. As for the outside guards, we are satisfied with the measures taken. I lived through the Munich tragedy and do not want anything like it to be re­peated here.

YANNIS RITSOS: 'THE FESTIVE ATMOSPHERE WHICH

WILL LIVE IN MY HEART FOR A LONG TIME'

"I am happy lo be in Mos­cow during the Olympics," said Greek poet Yannis Ritsos, one

of the guests of honour.

"When the opportunity arose, 1 didn't hesitate a second, but came even though it was tough for me, as my health is not es­pecially good. Doctors advised me to stay put. Some papers wrote that Ritsos was ill, but was going to a country where medical services were practical­ly non-existent.

"Besides, I was very busy, preparing a new poetry collec­tion for print. But I dropped everything and left. Before leaving, I made a statement to the newspaper Rizospastis, pointing out that I was going to Moscow for another reason— to oppose the miserable boy­cott of the Olympic Games which reaction tried to en­gineer.

"Olympic Moscow is totally different from the description one sometimes reads in the Western press. Everything is perfectly organized. I was put up at Intourist Hotel, and the service has been perfect. As a matter of fact, the medical personnel is exceptionally well trained — the very people that I was told are 'non-existent'.

"I often see spectators from abroad in animated conversa­tions with Moscow residents. The Olympics are an excellent opportunity for people from countries with different polit­ical systems to get together, and they will certainly contri­bute concretely lo the great mission of strengthening peace among nations.

"I will return to Greece bear­ing the festive atmosphere which will live in my heart for a long time."

TORCHBEARERS OF OLYMPICS-76 IN MOSCOW

Two Canadian athletes — Sandra Henderson and Steven Prefontaine — lit the Olympic flame which inaugurated the 1976 Games in Montteal. And they weie aUo it the opening cere­mony of the 22nd Olympic Games in Moscow to present the Olympic flag to the Mos­cow City Soviet.

The two said that only when the Moscow Mayor, Mr. Promyslov, touched the flag, they felt they had accomplished their mission and that something mag­nificent had happened.

But they were even more impressed by the extraordinary programme following the of­ficial ceremony. "We've never seen anything like it before," they said.

Henderson and Prefontaine are in Moscow for the first time.

Sandra fondly recalls her en­counters with the people here, during which the barrier — though surmountable — towards understanding was, as she put it, simply the language.

Commenting on the security, Prefontaine said that it was just as tight in Montreal. He said that the security measures for the athletes were justified, as nobody wanted to see another Munich.

The Montreal representatives said that Washington's cam­paign to boycott the Moscow Olympics was alien to sports, and that they still believe in the ideals of Pierre de Couber-tin, the founder of the modern Olympics. Young people from around the world should fieely take part in international com­petitions held under the great Olympic ideals.

Lyudmlla Kondratyeva of the USSR (centre), Olympic champion fn the 100 m (11.06 sec), with GDR runnei up Marlies Gohr (11.07 sec) and Ingrid Auerswald also of the GDR, who was third (11.14 sec). Kondratyeva is the first Soviet woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the sprint,

Britain's Steven Ovett captured the 800 m finals In the time of 1:45.4, Sebastian Сое, also of Britain, was runner-up in 1:45.9. Nikolai Ki­rov of the USSR was third in 1:46.0. Hundreds of British spectators warmly hailed their countrymen, singing the national anthem during the award presentation ceremony

Viewpoints

WINNERS AND LOSERS AT THE 1980 OLYMPICS

The first winners at the 1980 Olympics were known even before the Games opened. They were, as Leonid Brezhnev pointed out in his greetings to the Olympic participants, the ideals of friendship and mutual under­standing, and the peoples' will for contacts and co­operation.

But before the first Olympic Games ever held in a cap­ital of a socialist country got under way, obstacles of political intrigue and attacks had to be broken down.

Three times the modern Olympics did not take place because of the two world wars. The current American President will go down in history as the man who made the "fourth attempt" to thwart the Games.

Sheer ignorance prevented the boycott initiators to grasp the fact that the Games belong to the international sports movement, and not to the USSR or Moscow.

There is a definite logic of its own which has those who were only yesterday committing crimes in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East and Chile now claiming the title of "champions" of the anti-Olympic movement.

The enemies of the Olympics have suffered a defeat.

Unfortunately many athletes also suffered along with them. The athletes' plans and hopes were crushed under the steamroller of pre-election ambitions and primitive anti-communism. Olympic athletes from 81 countries and sports fans around the world sincerely sympathize with those who were blocked from coming.

GYMNASTICS — THE BEST EVER COMPETITION

The six days of the Olympic gymnastics competition revealed some real advances in technique and the tremendous spectator Interest the sport enjoys, as-seen by the "full houses" throughout. At the approaches to the Palace of Sports, the question so dear to the organiz­ers' hearts — "You don't hap­pen to have a spare ticket?"— was heard frequently.

By every measure, the gym­nastics competition was a suc­cess.

Firstly, there was the high standard of performance. Many gymnasts now do the really complicated elements that Just recently were the property of the few. Double somersaults in the floor exercises and on dis­mounts are now routine. One can see gymnasts from countries that are not powers in the sport do flyovers the horizontal bar, rotations ("big revolutions") by the men on one arm on the horizontal bar, and the "big revolutions" on the asymmet­rical bars, the "flag" (one-arm stand with a turn on the beam), the backward somersault in tuck position (on the beam) by the women, etc., etc. No wonder the ordinarily strict judges were rather free with 9.9, 9.95 and even perfect 10.0 marks. There are no records kept in gymnastics, but in our estima­tion, this competition saw a record number of high marks and a record level of complex­ity in the voluntary pro­grammes.

Second, competition was ex­tremely tight, especially with the women, and the fight for the overall title was truly dramatic. On the eve of the finals, Romania's Nadia Coma-necl, who had led up to then, fell off the bars and tumbled down Into fourth place. Gnauck (GDR), Shaposhnikova (USSR), Eberle (Romania), Comanecl, Davydova (USSR) and Kim (USSR) were all neck and neck by the time it came to the last four exercises.

Then the free-for-all began. Gnauck lost points on the beam and in the vault. Eberle toppled off the beam. Kim and Shaposh­nikova fell short in the exer­cises, and Comaneci's vault was not especially brilliant (9.75). Only Davydova was constantly on key. In the end, victory depended on how well Comane­cl would do the beam (where she is superb). Davydova had closed out her performances with a total of 79.150 points, and Comanecl was yet to come. A 9.95 (quite possible because she had received 10.0 points on the beam) would make her the gold medallist, less.... After lots of consultation the judges gave her 9.85. It was a tough routine, but the judges detected imperfections in her perfor­mance — a slight loss of ba­lance.

The graceful, well-propor­tioned and charming Nadia Co-manesl looked simply marvellous. Many felt Comanecl to be the most attractive of the women who competed at Luzhniki.

So Leningrad's Yelena Davy­dova, 18, ended up as gold medallist, and Gnauck and Co­manecl shared second place with 79.075 points each.

In team scoring, the big tus­sle was between teams that are obviously the strongest in the world — the USSR and Roma­nia. Final placings were: USSR

394.9; Romania—393.5; GDR

392.5.

The USSR also won the men's team event with 589.6 points, with the GDR — 581.15, and Hungary — 575.0 following.

Alexander Dityatin (USSR), the 1979 world overall champion and holder ol many other top titles, racked up 118.4 points to win his first Olympic overall title. His calmness and cleanly defined performance, full of complex elements, are of high quality. He was generally ex­pected to win. Veteran Soviet gymnast Nikolai Andrianov was second overall (118.15), and Stoyan Delchev (Bulgaria), the European champion, was third (117.5).

The winners In the separate exercises were: men — Dityatin (rings); Andrianov (long horse); Tkachov (USSR) (parallel bars); Delchev (horizontal bar); Bruck­ner (GDR) (floor exercises); Magyar (pommel horse); wom­en — Shaposhnikova (vault); Gnauck (asymmetrical bars); Comanecl (beam); Kim and Co­manecl (floor exercises).

 

 

RECORDS GALORE

REBIRTH OF THE ANCIENT SPORT

Wrestling, one of the sports at the ancient Greek Olympics and at nearly all the modern Games, Is witnessing a resurrec­tion in Moscow. Twenty-six countries sent wrestlers to the Moscow Olympics, testimony to the growing popularity of Greco-Roman wrestling. The USSR won five of the ten avail­able gold medals — four So­viet wrestlers won their first Olympic title, while Alexander Kolchinsky repeated his Mont­real triumph. The USSR also bagged two silvers and a bronze.

One of the Olympic gold me­dals went to Stilianos Migiakis, the first Greek wrestler to win an Olympic title in the 84 years of the modem Olympics. Other champions are Hungary's Norbert Nottny and Ferenc Kocsis;

Bulgaria's Gheorghi Raikov and Romania's Stefan Rusu. None of these countries managed to pick up any titles at the Mont­real Olympics.

Other medals were won by-Poland, Finland, Sweden and Lebanon.

"I'd like to point to the growing popularity of the sport and the excellent competition organiza­tion," Fernando Compte (Spain), General Secretary of the Inter­national Amateur Wrestling Federation (FILA), told Moscow News. "We have medallists from far more countries. For example, the bronze medal won by Lebanon's Hassan Bihara was that country's first ever in 28 years. Cuba also showed good progress."