[ad_1]
Tokyo (AP) – these are unique Olympics – and the Tokyo Olympics certainly are – but it is an event that has survived wars, boycotts and now a pandemic of 125 years of modern history .
The Tokyo Olympics have already broken new ground and entered for the first time in an odd year due to a 12-month delay due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, it is characterized by the fact that it is the first game without spectators, as fans are not allowed in Japan, abroad or locally.
“We are in uncharted territory,†said Steve Wilson, former president of the Olympic Journalists Association, which covered the Olympic movement from The Associated Press for nearly 30 years until 2017.
“It will be the carnival atmosphere, the celebrations and the fun games that we are expecting and looking forward to. Certainly for the history books.
But in the past, there have been many other rare editions of the Olympics. The United States and many of its allies boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union and many of its allies went back and forth four years later by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Dozens of countries, mostly Africa, boycotted the 1976 Montreal Games to protest New Zealand’s sports affairs with South Africa’s apartheid regime. South Africa was banned from competition from 1964 to 1988 due to apartheid.
There were no matches in 1916, 1940 or 1944, as World War I and II forced the Olympics to be canceled altogether. At the time of WWI, there were no other Winter Olympics, but WWII canceled two of them.
The 1940 Olympics were to be held in Tokyo, but London was chosen as the venue when the 1948 Olympics returned. Tokyo had to wait until 1964 to host the tournament for the first time.
And in 1920 there was the Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. It took place when the world emerged from both World War I and the flu epidemic, killing over 50 million people.
“They organized the tournament as quickly as possible, but it was a relatively improvised tournament,” Belgian sports historian Roland Renson told AP last year. “They had to do it by free means, and they were not plentiful in the towns that were badly affected by the war at the time.”
The coronavirus pandemic has also affected Antwerp’s 100th anniversary, forcing last year’s celebration to be canceled.
Another bizarre Olympic event occurred at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, when an equestrian event was held in Stockholm for Australia’s animal quarantine regulations.
And there is the absence of the Athens Olympics of 1906, or the Olympics of 1906.
Originally called the “Athens International Olympics†and endorsed by the IOC, it is now known as the 1906 Interleave (or Intermediate) Game. It takes place in the middle of the normal four-year Olympic cycle. According to Olympic historian David Walletinsky, they were governed informally in 1949.
The tragedy also affected the Olympics. Especially when 11 members of the Israeli team were killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September at the Munich Olympics in 1972, and when a bomb exploded in the Olympic Park at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Other host cities have refused the right to host the tournament. For example, the 1908 Olympics were originally awarded to Rome, but moved to London after the eruption of Vesuvius because the Italian government decided it would be better to use its financial resources to rebuild Naples.
Rome finally hosted the Games in 1960.
Some Olympics have a particularly controversial past. It is the Berlin Olympics of 1936. The tournament was awarded about two years before Adolf Hitler became a dictator, but took place under Nazism. Jesse Owens, a great African-American track, has won four gold medals but will only be in all three events in the 100m, 200m and long jump.
Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were two of the esteemed members of the 4x100m relay team. They were replaced by Owens and Ralph Metcalf, who won the race with Frank Wykoff and Foy Draper at world record speeds.
“The ugly situation is described in the full book of the 2012 Olympics.†“Storler and Glickman are the only Jews on the US sports team, and they returned to the US as the only members. The team that did not compete.
———
Other AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games And https://twitter.com/AP-Sports
[ad_2]
