Olympic Games of 1976

The Event The 1976 staging of winter and summer international athletic competitions, held every four years

Date Winter Games, February 4-15, 1976; Summer Games, July 17-August 1, 1976.

Place Winter Games, Innsbruck, Austria; Summer Games, Montreal, Canada

Despite prohibitive financial costs and political disruptions and boycotts, the Winter and Summer Olympic Games of 1976 were largely successful and highlighted a number of prominent athletes to an international audience, including Bill Koch, Rosi Mittermaier, Dorothy Hamill, Nadia Comaneci, Bruce Jenner, Edwin Moses, Kornelia Ender, and Leon Spinks.

Following the 1972 Olympic Games, Avery Brundage, who had served as the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 1952, stepped down, and Lord Michael Killanin of Ireland became the new head of the IOC. The 1976 Olympics would be the first for Lord Killanin’s administration. In 1972, the IOC awarded the 1976 Winter Games to Denver, Colorado, but in 1972, Colorado voters rejected a five-million-dollar bond issue to finance the undertaking. As a result, Denver withdrew, and Innsbruck, Austria, stepped in to host the Winter Games, as it had in 1964.

The twelfth Winter Olympic Games were represented by thirty-seven nations and 1,123 athletes: 231 women, 892 men. The Olympic program featured thirty-seven events, including a new one, ice dancing. The Austrians had constructed twin Olympic cauldrons, and for the first time in Olympic history, two flames were lit, one in each cauldron. One cauldron represented the previous time that the Olympics were held in Innsbruck, and the other represented the present Games. As a result of the terrorist event during the 1972 Munich Games, during which eleven Israeli athletes were killed, the Games were conducted under extreme security that included uniformed guards with submachine guns.

Controversy and Performances

Before the Games, the Soviet bloc made objections to the IOC regarding the broadcasting rights that were provided to Radio Free Europe to cover the Games. The IOC responded to the Soviet objection and disallowed Radio Free Europe the rights to air the Games. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated his disapproval of IOC’s caving in to the Soviet bloc.

On the first day of competition, Bill Koch, from Guilford, Vermont, became the first American to win a medal in cross-country skiing by placing second in the 30-kilometer race. The United States would compile three gold medals. Sheila Young, of Detroit, won the 500-meter ice skating sprint, and Peter Mueller, of Mequon, Wisconsin, won the 1,000-meter ice skating event. Nineteen-year-old Dorothy Hamill from Connecticut won the gold medal in figure skating. Her performance was flawless, and she received resounding applause from the nine thousand spectators in the Olympic Ice Stadium.

Rosi Mittermaier of West Germany won two gold medals in alpine skiing: downhill and the slalom. She needed a victory in the giant slalom to win the coveted grand slam, which no woman had ever won. She won the silver medal in the giant slalom, placing second to Canada’s Kathy Kreiner and losing her bid to win the grand slam by twelve-hundredths of a second.

Summer Olympic Games

The twenty-first Summer Olympic Games had a total of 6,028 athletes—4,781 men and 1,247 women—representing ninety-two nations. The Olympic program included twenty-one sports and 198 events, with new events for women in basketball, team handball, and rowing.

When Montreal accepted the hosting of the Games, Mayor Jean Drapeau gambled on making the games self-financing. The original budget estimate was $310 million. Drapeau’s organizing committee thought the costs for hosting the games would be balanced from the $25 million in television rights from the American Broadcasting System (ABC) and the corporate advertising rights bought by Coca-Cola, Pitney-Bowes, and Adidas. However, the growing global inflation coupled with labor disputes resulted in the cost for staging the Olympics growing to $1.5 billion. The Olympic Park alone cost $800 million and the stadium another $650 million, and security expenses stood at $100 million. The escalating cost of the Games resulted in the Quebec provincial government taking over the construction from Mayor Drapeau. The $1 billion debt earned from the Games took twenty-two years to pay off.

Political Controversy

Five hours before the opening ceremonies, twenty-two African nations and three from Asia refused to participate in the opening ceremonies. The Supreme Council for Sport in Africa (SCSA) was calling for a boycott to protest the inclusion of New Zealand to participate in the Games. The SCSA claimed that New Zealand violated the Olympic sanction of South Africa to participate in the Games by having a New Zealand rugby team tour South Africa earlier in the year. New Zealand claimed that the rugby team had no affiliation with any Olympic organization since rugby was not an Olympic sport. Furthermore, New Zealand officials cited that an American women’s softball team had toured South Africa and that during the present Olympic Games there was a South African cricket team touring Canada. The IOC saw no grounds to disallow New Zealand from participating. The SCSA protest against New Zealand resulted in the boycott of the Olympics of twenty-nine African nations and 690 athletes. Among the countries were Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Zambia. Kenya, with a delegation of 132, had several gold-medal prospects among its thirty-two track-and-field athletes. The long-awaited contest between John Walker of New Zealand and Filbert Bayi of Tanzania, who traded record times in the 1,500-meter track event throughout the previous four years, did not occur.

In 1970, Canada instituted a one-China policy in which the People’s Republic of China (PRC), not Taiwan, was recognized as China. The IOC had recognized Taiwan as the Republic of China for the 1976 Olympic Games, and it stated that the PRC was not a member of the IOC. The Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, stood fast with recognizing only one China. The U.S. government opposed the Canadian stand. The United States Olympic Committee debated whether to compete in the Olympics if Taiwan was refused the right to be recognized as China. A compromise between the IOC and the Canadian government was offered: The athletes from the PRC could compete under their flag but would have to be recognized as athletes from Taiwan (the Republic of China). On July 16, the delegation from the Republic of China refused the compromise solution and did not participate. The United States was so opposed to the decision that U.S. secretary of state Kissinger refused to attend the Games.

Athletic Performances

In light of the political disruptions, the Games continued with eighty-eight participating nations. A fourteen-year-old Romanian schoolgirl named Nadia Comaneci overshadowed the storied performance of Olga Korbut during the 1972 Games. On July 19, Comaneci received the first perfect score of 10 in Olympic gymnastics. In total, she scored seven perfect scores of 10 en route to her three gold medals, one silver, and one bronze. In men’s gymnastics, Nikolai Andrianov won four individual gold medals in floor exercise, vaulting horse, rings, and combined. In addition to his four gold medals, Andrianov won two silver medals and one bronze for a total of seven medals.

American men dominated the swimming events. The team won twelve out of thirteen gold medals, losing out only to David Wilkie of Great Britain in the 200-meter breaststroke. Out of the thirty-three medals for individual events, American men captured twenty-five. John Naber collected a total of four gold medals and one silver medal. Every event in men’s swimming had a world record set except for the 100-meter butterfly.

In 1912, women’s swimming was introduced as an Olympic sport, and American female swimmers first appeared in 1920. Following 1920, the United States women swimmers had been the most dominant force in the Olympics. However, in 1976, swimmers from East Germany overwhelmed the United States. Of the thirteen swimming events, East German women won eleven gold medals, and the U.S. won one gold medal. Leading the East German swimmers was Kornelia Ender, who earned four gold medals and established three world records and equaled one.

The Montreal Games were a banner Olympics for American boxing. U.S. boxers won five gold medals—the most since 1952. Gold-medal winners for the United States included Leo Randolph (flyweight), Howard Davis (lightweight), Sugar Ray Leonard (light welterweight), Michael Spinks (middleweight), and Leon Spinks (light heavyweight). However, it was Teofilo Stevenson of Cuba who won the heavyweight gold medal, as he did in 1972 and 1980.

In track and field, Edwin Moses won the gold medal in 400-meter hurdles in world-record time of 47.64, winning by 8 meters in front of second-place finisher Michael Shine, also of the United States. Missing from the event, because of the African nation boycott, was John Aki Bua of Uganda, who had the world record in the 1972 Olympics. Alberto Juantorena of Cuba won gold medals in the 400-meter and 800-meter events, establishing a world record of 1:43.50. Lasse Viren of Finland continued to do what he did in the 1972 Olympic Games by winning both the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter events. In the 100-meter race, the first-ranked American, Harvey Glance, came in fourth; for the first time since 1928, the United States failed to medal in the 100-meter race. Hasely Crawford of Trinidad won the gold. In field events, Mac Wilkins of the United States won the discus, and John Powell won the bronze. In the long jump, Americans Arnie Robinson won the gold medal and Randy Williams won the silver medal. The decathlon was won by Bruce Jenner of the United States in world-record points of 8,617.

The medal standings at the conclusion of the Montreal Olympic Games had the Soviet Union winning a total of 125 medals: 49 gold, 41 silver, and 35 bronze. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) had a total of ninety medals: forty gold, twenty-five silver, and twenty-five bronze. The United States had more medals than the GDR with ninety-four but held six less in gold, with a total of thirty-four.

Impact

The economic turmoil that surfaced during the 1976 Montreal Games frightened many countries from considering hosting subsequent Olympics events. Following the 1976 economic disaster of the Montreal Games, only one city offered to bid on the 1984 Olympic Games, Los Angeles. The use of the Olympic Games as a means to express political protest would continue in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, when President Jimmy Carter ordered the United States Olympic Committee to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games in order to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. As a response, the Soviet bloc nations boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Bibliography

Espy, Richard. The Politics of the Olympic Games. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. The author provides a historical account of the political, economic, social, and philosophical forces that have influenced the conduct of the Olympic Games.

Mallon, Bill, and Ian Buchanan. Quest for Gold: The Encyclopedia of American Olympians. New York: Leisure Press, 1984. Provides brief biographical review of American Olympic athletes.

Preuss, Holger. The Economics of the Olympic Games: Hosting the Games, 1972-2000. Petersham, N.S.W.: Walla Walla Press, 2001. Reviews the economic costs encountered in hosting the Olympic Games and outlines the revenue generated during the Olympic Games.

Wallechinsky, David. The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 2000. Gives facts and statistics on important athletes and all sports involved in the Summer Games.