03/08/1980
The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games is a chance to reflect on the glory of the world’s best competing on the grandest stage of them all. After almost three weeks of intense competition, it’s a c...
When Waldemar Cierpinski won the marathon gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, it was one of the biggest shocks the event had ever seen. The red-hot favourite had been Frank Shorter, the ...
02/08/1980
Russia and East Germany hoovered up the majority of the medals at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, but judo was a sport where the spoils were expected to be shared more evenly. The event was held at ...
Barbel Wockel was one of the key cogs of the East German machine that dominated women’s sprinting during the 1970s and early 1980s. A powerful yet graceful runner, Wockel had claimed the 200m gold med...
It’s safe to say that Russia’s women’s volleyball team was looking to salvage some battered pride at the 1980 Olympic Games tournament in Moscow. The all-conquering Red machine had dominated Olympic c...
With the powerful Japanese and American teams absent from the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, the archery events were particularly hard hit. The favourites for the gold medal at the Trade Unions Olympic...
01/08/1980
Few Olympic events place the protagonists in such cold isolation as a track cycling time trial. Man or woman and machine in a race against the clock, no other competitors in sight. Those hours and hou...
Teofilo Stevenson was the greatest amateur boxer the world has ever seen, who eschewed the millions on offer in the professional game in favour of the honour and pride of representing his native Cuba....
31/07/1980
The modern pentathlon is that classic Olympic event testing a competitor’s ability in rounds of shooting, swimming, fencing, riding and running. The brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of t...
30/07/1980
The absence of the American contingent from the Olympic Games in Moscow did little to lessen the tension and air of expectancy before track and field’s blue riband event, the men’s 100m. With the like...
The final torchbearer, basketballer Sergei Belov, in the Moscow Olympic Stadium during the Opening Ceremony ©IOC
A torchbearer during the Moscow 1980 Games Torch relay ©IOC
Aleksandr Dityatin on the rings at the Moscow 1980 Games ©IOC
The reverse of this medal is very different from its obverse. However, it is not the work of the same artist. While the obverse was a creation by Giuseppe Cassioli, the reverse was designed by Ilya Postol, a young Soviet sculptor. We can see several elements that stand out through their stylisation: an Olympic cauldron, an athletics track in the background and the official logo of the Moscow Games on the top right ©CIO
The obverse comprises a design by Tuscan artist Giuseppe Cassioli. This motif can be found on the obverse of all the winner’s medals presented at the Summer Games since 1928 with the exception of three special cases: Barcelona'92, Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. An inscription, in Cyrillic, allows us to make the link with the Moscow Games. This is its transcription in the Latin alphabet and its translation: “Igry XXII Olympiady Moskva 1980” / “Games of the XXII Olympiad, Moscow 1980”©IOC
View of the delegations standing in front of the Misha mascot created by the public holding up boards ©IOC
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