Sport: A Playground (or Fun

From the beginning, the idea was to make the biggest, costliest and most widely seen sports spectacular in history an "intimate affair." It seems an improbable feat, but the organizers of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were resolved to resist "gargantuism," to emphasize the "human scale," and to build an "anti-monument sports complex" in a green setting with a "minimum of travel." Most important for a community that other Germans call "Weltstadt mit Herz" (Metropolis with a Heart) there must be a "touch of gaiety in the air." The goal, says Willi...

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