For the athletes, the competition is the thing
Spectators might say, "It's only a game," and they should say it, 20 times a day. But can a building contractor ever say, "It's only a house"? To the world's athletes, the Olympics are not merely sport, and their reactions to the Soviet withdrawal ranged from a sigh to a bolt of anger. "The hell with them," said Al Oerter, a U.S. discus thrower with four Olympiads and four gold medals under his broad belt. Willie Banks, the triple jumper, called the Olympics "the biggest political football in the history of man," and Marathoner Alberto Salazar despaired, "It's going to be the death blow for the Games. It has happened too many years."
While political interruptions at the Olympics trace at least to Hitler and probably to Zeus, Munich in 1972 is where innocence died, along with eleven others. "If we stop the Games every time there is disorder in the world," said Avery Brundage, the Olympic politician, "there would never be Games." When he decreed that terrorists should not be allowed to spoil the fun, and let the Games resume, public opinion was divided. But the athletes were agreed: by all means, play on. Physically, emotionally and materially, they had sacrificed too much.
For then and always, their position was expressed most simply by Olga Connolly, a discus thrower who carried the U.S. flag in Munich's opening procession. And she could speak from both sides of the curtain. As a member of the Czechoslovak team in 1956, Olga Fikotova fell for American Hammer Thrower Harold Connolly, and against those two, red tape never had a chance. "On the day my mother died," she said that bleak afternoon in Bavaria, "I still had to do my housework." Training is that basic to them.
When he heard the thunder last week, U.S. Swimmer Jesse Vassallo felt a sympathetic shudder. "The first thing that came to mind was Vladimir Salnikov," he said, referring to the dashing Soviet champion of two Olympic events. "I swam with that guy, trained with him. I know how hard he had to work to maintain what he had. My God, he must feel so empty." Salnikov, the swimmer. Dmitri Belozerchev, the gymnast. Sergei Bubka, the pole vaulter. Anatoli Pisa-renko, the weight lifter. These are the glamorous losses. The marvelous women swimmers from East Germany, including Birgit Meineke and Kristin Otto. Czechoslovakia's middle-distance wonder Jarmila Kratochvilova. No Zamira Zaitseva now to tumble in the wake of Mary Decker. Zaitseva is a Soviet, but the other East bloc countries constitute the grievous loss to track and field. Women's track is becoming something of another East German preserve.