International Olympic Committee : News

Poignant Closing Ceremony rounds off challenging Games

8/3/1980 5:58:00 PM

After almost three weeks of intense competition, it’s a chance for all the athletes to relax and celebrate in the festival of sport to which they have all contributed.

It also marks the passing of one host to another, when the city that has spent so long lovingly preparing for the Games passes on that duty.

But with the United States boycotting the Games and the next hosts being Los Angeles, the Closing Ceremony at the iconic Lenin stadium was lent a poignant air.

The United States national anthem was replaced by the Olympic anthem, while there was no handing over of the flag to representatives of LA.

However, the organisers were not perturbed and managed to present a display of Russian pride every bit as dazzling as the Opening Ceremony had been.

Again the crowd was called upon to make the spectacle by holding cards aloft to make massive images, the most memorable being the bouncing Olympic flag.

The ever-present Games mascot, Misha, shedding a tear at the closing of the Games, entered the stadium attached to balloons; and she was released into the evening sky to rapturous applause from the crowd.

It was time to say goodbye to the Games that had created so many memorable moments, from the intensity of the battle between Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe to the ring craftsmanship of giant Cuban Teofilo Stevenson.

The Olympic baton passed to Los Angeles, which four years hence, would have the honour of hosting the greatest show on earth.

Cierpinski enters marathon hall of fame

8/3/1980 5:44:00 PM

The red-hot favourite had been Frank Shorter, the defending champion, but the East German Cierpinski emerged from the pack to record his first major international success.

It was a remarkable turnaround for Cierpinski, because he had had to run a marathon nine weeks before Montreal to finally convince selectors that he was worthy of his place on the plane.

Like many world class distance runners, the circumstances of his childhood played a major part in his progress.

Similar to Haile Gebrselassie, he needed to run six kilometres every day to get to and from school, and consequently built up terrific aerobic reserves.

In his teenage years he trained as part of East Germany’s supremely disciplined regime, and was recording world class times by his late teens.

He had run only two career marathons a year before his Montreal gold medal, but once he crashed onto the international scene by defeating Shorter, his training regime became even more intense.

By the time Moscow came around he was among the favourites, and did not look flustered in the early stages when the Mexican Rodolfo Gomez surged into the lead.

Dutchman Gerhardus Nijboer briefly seized the lead two thirds of the way through the race before Cierpinski claimed an advantage he would never let go.

He went on to win in a relatively slow time of two hours 11.03 seconds, but it was enough to see him enter the record books alongside Ethiopian great Abebe Bikila as a back-to-back Olympic marathon champion.

He was denied the chance of a hat-trick when the Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Wockel leads East German sprint charge

8/2/1980 12:12:00 PM

A powerful yet graceful runner, Wockel had claimed the 200m gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal at the age of 21 running under her maiden name of Eckert.

There she had fended off a variety of Eastern Bloc opposition, and the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games by the United States only increased her chances of success four years later.

Barbel Wockel and team-mates Marita Koch, Marlies Gohr and Renate Stecher rewrote the record books during the late 1970s, pushing women’s record marks to heights never seen before.

World record holder Koch was the fastest in the world over 200m when the Moscow Games arrived but opted to compete over 400m instead.

Wockel ran the perfect tactical series of races, doing the bare minimum to qualify in the early rounds and keeping her powder dry for the competitive battles ahead.

It was clear that Wockel was keeping as much as she could in the tank when she finished a relaxed second behind graceful Jamaican Merlene Ottey in the semi-finals.

Wockel, Ottey and Russian Natalya Bochina, who had clocked a scintillating 22.26secs in her opening heat, were the favourites as the athletes lined up in Moscow’s Grand Arena.

As the athletes exploded out of the blocks, Wockel ran a superb bend and entered the home straight with a two-yard lead over Bochina. She powered to the line, not yielding an inch to the Russian, and clocked a winning time of 22.03 seconds, an Olympic record.

Wockel teamed up with Romy Muller, Ingrid Auerswald and Marlies Gohr to retain the 4x100m relay gold for East Germany and bring Wockel’s personal Olympic gold medal tally to four.

Russian volleyballers grind out gold medal

8/2/1980 11:57:00 AM

The all-conquering Red machine had dominated Olympic competition since women first started competing in volleyball way back 1964.

The team won two of the first three golds on offer before a stunning thrashing at the hands of Japan in the 1976 final in Montreal showed their mortality.

Japan’s win and the rising talent base in China and Cuba offered a genuine threat to Russian domination in the sport which had netted four world titles in the immediate post-War years.

Cuba and Japan had the audacity to contest the 1978 world championship final on Russia’s home soil in Leningrad, and it was in the unaccustomed position of not being favourite when the Olympic tournament started two years later.

The Russians fired a warning shot across the boughs of all their rivals at the Druzhba Arena with crushing preliminary round wins over East Germany and Cuba, the latter meaning the world champions failed to qualify for the semi-finals.

They lost just two sets in the qualifiers, conceding only 99 points in the process and entered the semi-finals with renewed spring in their step.

Hungary battled defiantly for two sets of the semi before capitulating 15-2 in the third as Russia booked their place in the gold medal playoff where they were again pitted against the East Germans.

There was an electric atmosphere as the two teams faced off through the net and the first two sets were shared with some of the highest quality rallies.

Once Russia, playing in an unfamiliar blue kit, had clinched a tight third set 15-13 there was only going to be one winner and the hosts sealed the victory by a 15-7 margin in the fourth.

Poikolainen wins archery gold

8/2/1980 11:07:00 AM

The favourites for the gold medal at the Trade Unions Olympics Sports Centre were the home hope, Boris Isachenko, and the bronze medallist from Montreal, Italian Giancarlo Ferrari.

However as the competition progressed, it was clear the main contenders had not counted on the challenge of the Finn Tomi Poikolainen.

With the men firing at targets from distances of 90, 70, 50 and 30 metres, consistency was key, and from the outset the 18-year-old from Helsinki was showing himself to be the most nerveless of marksmen.

Hungarian Bela Nagy finished the first round with a narrow lead over the field, with Britain’s Mark Blenkarne in second place.

Poikolainen was fifth and just out of the medals, but his endurance and powers of concentration were to see him gradually force his way to the top of the leaderboard.

The windy conditions and a vociferous home crowd cheering on Isachenko did little to throw the Finn off his stride and he eventually secured victory by three points from the Russian.

He finished fifth in Los Angeles four years later, when American Darrell Pace returned after the boycott to add to the gold he had won at Montreal by eclipsing the field again.

Poikolainen did help Finland to a silver at the team event at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Khabareli surges to judo supremacy

8/2/1980 6:38:00 PM

The event was held at the splendidly atmospheric Sports Palace in Luzhniki, where the tight confines and vociferous crowd made for a superb fighting arena.

Unfortunately, the men’s half middleweight event was deprived of its biggest name because of the boycott.

Japan’s Shozo Fujii had won the world title in Paris in spectacular fashion the previous year, and would have been the favourite had he been allowed to compete in Moscow.

That honour duly fell to the Frenchman Bernard Tchoullyan, the man he’d beaten in the world championship final.

Tchoullyan eased through the early rounds, but defeat in the semi-final left the path open for Georgian-born Russian Shota Khabareli.

The 21-year-old had never won a major judo medal, but the experts sat up and took notice when he disposed of world championship bronze medallist Harald Heinke in the last 16.

He took out Bulgarian Georgi Petrov in the quarter-final, and when he surged past Romanian Mircea Fratica in the semi-finals, he suddenly found himself in a battle for the gold.

There he would face Cuban judoka Juan Ferrer La Hera, and the two enjoyed a classic game of cat and mouse.

The Georgian edged it and held his alarms aloft when the final buzzer rang out. He fell into the arms of La Hera, who graciously accepted defeat.

It was to prove the highlight of Khabareli’s career, although he took a world bronze in 1983 and went on to enjoy a successful coaching career.

Thoms wins race against clock

8/1/1980 11:51:00 AM

Man or woman and machine in a race against the clock, no other competitors in sight. Those hours and hours of intense training finally put to the test in the cauldron of Olympic competition where there is no second chance.

The absence of the Americans due to the boycott weakened the field to a degree, but otherwise the finest track cyclists convened at the Trade Unions Olympic Sports Centre, the track cycling venue at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

East Germany’s Lothar Thoms was at the peak of his game: he was one of only two riders ever to have won the 1km time-trial at the world championships four years in a row, and Moscow came right in the middle of that blistering run.

As Thoms took to the track in front of an expectant crowd, his target had been set.

Kazakhstan-born Russian cyclist Aleksandr Panfilov had set the fastest time of the final with one minute 4.845 seconds. Then all eyes were on Thoms.

The crowd hushed as the starting horn sounded and Thoms was away. Head bowed, he rode the perfect race, never losing his thundering rhythm or focus as he continually set the fastest split times.

As he crossed the line there were gasps of amazement at the time on the velodrome scoreboard: a new Olympic and world record of 1minute 2.955 seconds, and the 63-second barrier had been broken for the first time.

Such was the impact of his victory that, despite the cascade of golds won by the East Germans in Moscow that year, it was the 24-year-old from Brandenburg who claimed his country’s sports personality of the year award.

Stevenson ends golden heavyweight reign

8/1/1980 11:46:00 AM

He was a magnificent physical specimen: blessed with chiselled good looks and effortless grace and speed around the ring, Stevenson had crushed all opposition in winning gold medals in the heavyweight category in Munich and Montreal.

At Munich, he had been a raw 20-year-old but by the time the Olympic Games in Moscow arrived he was a hugely experienced craftsman in the ring.

He had twice won the world amateur title as well as his Olympic accolades, and despite the persistent advances of American promoters, he remained an amateur throughout his career, famously saying: “I prefer the affection of eight million Cubans.”

In Moscow, Stevenson was at his glorious best. He scored first and third-round knockdowns in his opening two bouts while in the semi-final his opponent, Istvan Leva of Hungary, secured the notable achievement of becoming the first boxer to go the distance against the Cuban in Olympic competition.

But he won that decisively 5-0 on points and booked his place in the final against Russian Pyotr Zayev.

Stevenson oozed confidence as the bell started the gold-medal fight. He outfoxed Zayev at every turn and recorded another comfortable points victory at the Olympiski Sports Complex.

The boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles by Cuba denied Stevenson the chance of an unprecedented fourth straight boxing gold yet he demonstrated his longevity by winning another world title in 1986 at the age of 34.

Cuba also boycotted the 1988 Games in Seoul and, who knows, had politics not prevented Stevenson from competing, he might have won five golds.

He turned to coaching after his retirement and died at the age of 60 in 2012.

Starostin enters modern pentathlon record books

7/31/1980 11:34:00 AM

The brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee, it is an event traditionally stretched over five days and which throws a unique set of challenges to the field.

The event at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow was of the highest standard, with the leading 25 all passing the landmark 5,000-point barrier.

The battle for gold fell between two men; the baby-faced 20-year-old Russian Anatoly Starostin and the Hungarian athlete Tamas Szombathelyi.

Szombathelyi took an early lead after an outstanding shooting round was bettered only by Swede George Horvath, who became the first person to fire a perfect round since the 1936 Games in Berlin.

He extended his lead after a narrow victory over Starostin in the 200m freestyle swim but the Russian reversed the tables with a tight victory in the fencing.

It was in the riding that Starostin made the crucial breakthrough, garnering 72 more points than his Hungarian rival and opening up a lead that he would never relinquish.

He clocked the eight fastest time of the final running round, and started with a big enough cushion over the Hungarian to reach the line first.

At 20, he became the youngest man ever to win the Olympic title.

The combined scores of Starostin and team-mates Pavlo Lednyov and Yevgeny Lipeyev was enough to give Russia gold in the now defunct team event.

Starostin helped Russia to a team silver in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, and he finished just outside of the medals in fourth in the individual event at the age of 32.

Kozakiewicz upsets home crowd with pole vault win

7/30/1980 10:53:00 AM

On a steamy afternoon, the Russian fans who packed into the Grand Arena were eager for a victory for home favourite Konstantin Volkov, yet the contest developed into an increasingly tense affair.

A slanging match between several thousand Polish fans in the crowd and the home support got more heated as the event went on.

The hero for the Poles was Lithuanian-born Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz.

He had broken the world record earlier in the year, but by the time the Moscow final arrived his mark had been eclipsed by Frenchmen Thierry Vigneron and Philippe Houvion.

Kozakiewicz and team- mate Tadeusz Slusarski, who was defending his title after winning the gold four years earlier at the Olympic Games in Montreal, qualified with some comfort for the final.

The final turned into a three-way contest between France, Poland and Russia.

The Russian-dominated home crowd roared on Volkov, yet it was the Poles who looked destined to joust for the gold.

Kozakiewicz didn’t miss a single clearance in the final, and celebrated the clinching leap with a less than polite clenched-fist gesture to the disappointed crowd.

For good measure the bar was raised to 5.78m and he sailed over to set another world record.