Eye on the Storm

The terrorist in white hat and sunglasses, the one called Issa, steps onto the balcony and threatens to kill another hostage.

This is what we recall.

A girl named Olga smiles in a perfectly girlish way, in pigtails. A day before, she stood in tears but now she is triumphant, throwing her hands into the air to wave at the crowd.

The memory endures.

Thirty years later, we call to mind the ruthless contrast of fear and joy at the 1972 Olympic Games in much the same way a television set works, in vibrant bits and pieces, electrons bombarding the small screen of our consciousness, causing tiny phosphors to glow in excitement.

The truth is, television pictures flicker in rapid fragments. Part of the picture appears, the phosphors on screen instantly fall dark, then another part is illuminated. The human eye has a way of connecting the dots so that we see a coherent image, a phenomenon known as persistence of vision.

The Munich Games possessed this quality. Persistence of vision.

The massacre of 11 Israeli team members by Palestinian terrorists. The elfin Olga Korbut. Mark Spitz with seven gold medals dangling around his neck. Valery Borzov sprinting. Jim Ryun falling. The Soviet basketball team defeating the United States in a muddled, controversial game.

These were the grandest Olympics to date, with the most nations and events, the most athletes. Even more significant, they were the most televised, ABC paying dearly to broadcast more than 60 hours back to America.

The network offered a different style of coverage, a storytelling approach it had pioneered on Saturday afternoon telecasts of “Wide World of Sports.” As an executive said beforehand: “We’re going into the Olympic Village for the first time and, if something controversial happens, we’ll report it.”

The stage was set. For better or worse, Munich delivered.

Even before the Games began, they were expected to be the most-watched event in history with an estimated 1 billion viewers, an astounding total considering that only 300 million had watched the first moon landing three years earlier.

Satellite time was purchased on Comsat’s Atlantic “bird” to beam three hours of prime-time coverage to the United States each weeknight. Technicians had new equipment that allowed them to process 1,200 hours of action over roughly two weeks.

ABC would use this technology to combine anchor Jim McKay’s narrative style with the wisdom of Roone Arledge, then president of ABC Sports, who insisted the Olympics were not about running and jumping, but about people. Give the viewer a rooting interest, he said. In the years leading up to the Games, network executives traveled to Germany more than 20 times to negotiate for this kind of broadcast.

“My biggest problem was insisting that ABC bring its own cameras,” Chuck Howard, an ABC vice president, told The Times in 1972. “The Germans fought this concept in the beginning, but relented. Our argument is that we wanted to ‘Americanize’ our coverage--dwell more on individuals if the situation requires it.”

The most likely candidate was Spitz, the California swimmer with mustachioed good looks. Though he had failed to make good on his brash predictions at Mexico City four years earlier, he arrived in Munich certain to be the star of the U.S. team. That made him ABC’s star.

“Mark really made our coverage,” said Donna de Varona, a network reporter at the Games. “We’d build the story every night: Is he going to win? Every night for a week.”

By the time Spitz collected a record seventh gold medal, his every stroke analyzed on screen, he was a household name. A whirlwind tour awaited him back home--a pin-up poster and endorsements, TV appearances with Sonny and Cher and Bob Hope--a fame that expired just as quickly when critics realized his deadpan personality was ill-suited to stardom.

But in the water, Spitz was electric enough to carry the Munich telecasts. And he had help from an unexpected co-star.

Decades later, fans might forget Lyudmila Tourischeva was the leader of the Soviet gymnastic team and winner of the all-around gold medal. They might forget because the previously unknown Korbut snatched the spotlight even as she slipped on the uneven bars to finish seventh in the all-around.

Korbut was made for television, a pixie with bright eyes and unfettered emotion.

“When Olga missed on the bars and started to cry, people in the stands started to cry,” said Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan, a radio reporter at those Games. “People saw that on television, it was like the whole world mourned with her.”

And, as Greenspan recalled, “ABC played her to the hilt.”

Four years earlier, a Czech gymnast named Vera Caslavska had charmed Mexican fans with a dazzling performance that went largely untelevised and unnoticed. This time, Arledge wanted the camera to shadow Korbut around the gymnastics hall, focusing on that beaming face as she completed a rags-to-riches story, winning two individual golds.

“You had Americans falling in love with Olga,” historian David Wallechinsky said. “The difference was television.”

Young gymnasts would thereafter be coached to smile and wave. Television producers would recognize gymnastics as a means of attracting more female viewers. Beyond the realm of sport, Korbut put an unexpected face on America’s arch enemy.

“There is a culturally dour presence that a lot of the [Soviets] had,” said Robert Edelman, author of “Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR.”

“Here is this person who was vivacious and smiled and seemed to be an individual. She did not fit the mold.”

Korbut later visited the White House, where President Nixon reportedly commented that she had done more to defuse the Cold War than all the meetings in Washington and Moscow combined.

On the heels of Marshall McLuhan’s suggestion that television would reduce the planet to a “global village,” the medium had given the Games worldwide prominence.

“That was a turning point,” Wallechinsky said. “So many more people are watching. Everyone’s TV is tuned to the Olympics.”

This popularity did not go unnoticed by members of Black September, the violent Palestinian faction desperate for attention in the early 1970s.

“That has been one of the theories that groups want to speak to the world through the media,” said Richard H. Dekmejian, a USC political science professor who studies terrorism. “They could bring to the attention of the world their grievance in the form of a vengeance attack. The world would see it.”

Maybe the terrorists saw the notoriety U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos achieved by raising their fists in a Black Power salute on the medals stand at Mexico City. Maybe they knew the Munich Games promised an even bigger stage.

In the early hours of Sept. 5, eight Black September commandos scaled a fence at the Olympic Village and broke into an apartment complex where the Israeli team slept.

McKay later recalled being awakened that morning by a knock on the door and a message that something extraordinary had occurred in the village. Awaiting directions from his producers, he went downstairs at the Sheraton-Munich Hotel to take a sauna and swim. Upon returning, he learned the details of the attack and hurried to the network’s broadcast center, still wearing damp trunks under his clothes.

Two Israelis were dead and the terrorists, demanding the release of comrades in Israeli jails, were threatening to kill more.

Over the course of 21 unblinking hours, viewers came to know Issa and another terrorist, Tony, who most often emerged to talk with West German officials. They caught glimpses of an Israeli captive led to a window to speak briefly with negotiators.

At one point, the coverage switched to a sporting event in progress. McKay noted the volleyball match, then murmured: “And now back to the real world.” Later, police aborted a raid when they realized their movements across the rooftops were being televised.

The ordeal ended past midnight when all the hostages, five terrorists and a police officer were killed in a gun battle at a nearby airport. By then, Arledge had cemented his reputation--he was later promoted to president of news--and McKay would be remembered for the simple, haunting line: “They’re all gone.” Cameras showed a grim-faced Spitz being whisked away in a car, sent home early because he was Jewish and officials feared for his safety.

In one respect, Dekmejian believes the captors failed to achieve their goal.

“Americans were told the meanness and nastiness of the terrorists but not why they did this,” said the professor, who still uses Munich footage in a class on terrorism. “Television didn’t have the time or inclination to cover the root of the Palestinian situation. So it backfired against them.”

Yet it was shown worldwide with cameras ABC had rolled out of its broadcast center and it succeeded in giving Americans an unprecedented look at such violence. It also succeeded in cementing Munich’s dubious legacy.

“From that point on, there was no avoiding that the Olympics were going to be a target, not because they were the Olympics but because the whole world was watching,” Wallechinsky said. “The African boycott of ‘76, the U.S. boycott of ‘80, the Soviet boycott of ‘84--all of them came from the unfortunate propaganda success of the ’72 Games.”

On Sept. 6, television covered a somber memorial from the gossamer-tented main stadium that a week earlier had played host to the opening ceremony of the so-called “Games of Joy.”

There was a move afoot to cancel the remaining events but the International Olympic Committee was reeling financially--with the troubled Montreal Olympics still to come--and Greenspan says, “If the Games had been canceled then, they never would have been renewed.”

The decision to continue was, depending on the point of view, a testament to human spirit or an example of misplaced values. In either case, the final days provided a few more memories.

“It seemed never-ending,” said Geoffrey Mason, ABC’s coordinating producer. “We’d get to the broadcast center and wonder what was going to happen next.”

Much of the earlier drama had taken place on the track, where Lasse Viren had recovered from a fall to set a world record in the 10,000 meters and Borzov had won the title of “world’s fastest man” with victories in the 100 and 200 meters. The closing days would be no different.

In the 1,500 meters, an administrative error matched defending champion Kip Keino against world-record holder Ryun in the opening round. The long-awaited showdown ended badly for Ryun, who tripped while squeezing through the pack and fell hard, lying dazed on the track. Keino won the heat and eventually the silver medal.

The Americans fared better as the competition stretched into Monday to compensate for a day of mourning. On Sept. 10, Frank Shorter became the first U.S. marathon winner since 1908. Yet even this victory was momentarily tainted as Shorter entered the stadium to a chorus of boos. Unbeknownst to him, fans were jeering an impostor who had run onto the track minutes earlier and been hustled away by security.

That day brought another event that, if not for the terrorist attack, might have been remembered as the blackest mark on these Games.

The men’s basketball final actually began the night before, tipoff delayed until 11:45 p.m. to accommodate U.S. television.

The Americans entered the game with a 62-0 record in Olympic competition but knew their Soviet opponent had closed the international gap.

The Americans trailed for most of the game before a furious rally, and two free throws by Doug Collins gave them a 50-49 lead with three seconds remaining.

Chaos ensued.

Soviet coaches charged onto the court, arguing that their request for a timeout had gone ignored. The game resumed with one second left and the USSR failed to score, sending the U.S. team into celebration, but an official came from the stands and ordered three seconds put back on the clock.

This time, Aleksandr Belov scored off a long pass. The Americans lost a protest and bitterly refused to accept their silver medals. In “The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics,” Wallechinsky characterizes the finish as “one of the greatest controversies in the history of international sports.”

Two decades later, in an interview with Sports Illustrated, U.S. player Kenny Davis added perspective.

“Every time I get to feeling sorry for myself, I think of the Israeli kids who were killed at those Games,” Davis said. “If the final game is the worst injustice that ever happens to the guys on that team, we’ll all come out of this life pretty good.”

The world might never witness another Olympics like the one that transpired in the summer of 1972.

Other Games have suffered political unrest and acts of violence but organizers now spend hundreds of millions on security and, save for the bomb that exploded in an Atlanta park in 1996, nothing has approached the bloodshed of the “Munich Massacre.”

On the playing fields, other Games have produced what Greenspan calls “the standard procedure ... a lot of great performances and a lot of controversy.” But, as De Varona said, “Munich was one story after another, hugely memorable. It wasn’t a sports festival, it was something bigger.”

And it was shown to us in a memorable way.

At the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, professor Joseph Angotti complains that Olympic coverage in this country has sunk into a morass, Arledge’s concept taken to the extreme with too many prepackaged vignettes, too many events tape-delayed and shown hours, even days, later.

“It has a very practiced, very predictable feel,” the chair of the broadcast program and former NBC executive said. “It’s the canned music, the over-dramatized scenes of people walking into the sunset.”

Munich was different. It was unnervingly unscripted, viewers drawn into a remarkable convergence of events. “The New York Times and Los Angeles Times could have written endless stories about Olga Korbut and it would not have had the same impact as watching her perform those feats live,” Angotti said.

As Wallechinsky put it: “When you see a person’s face, that makes a big difference. Particularly if you see the emotions changing.”

This is what we recall.

Tears transformed into a smile, impossibly wide and bright for Korbut’s small face, her crinkled nose. The unfathomable juxtaposition of Issa’s dark features, shadowed by his floppy cap, his gestures growing more urgent as nightfall approached.

Fragments of images flicker across our collective memory. Persistence of vision. Thirty years later, the phosphors still burn brightly.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

MUNICH OLYMPICS 30 YEAR LATER

AUG. 26, 1972: DAY 1

*--* HEADLINES

*--*

From Berlin to Munich ...

Thirty-six years before, as the 1936 Summer Olympics opened in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, the Greek shepherd who won the first marathon of the modern Olympics in 1896 presented Adolf Hitler with an olive twig plucked from Mt. Olympus. “I give to you this olive branch as a symbol of love and peace,” Spiridon Loues told the Fuehrer. “We hope that the nations will ever meet solely in such peaceful competition.” It was reported that Hitler almost cried.

In 1972, the Olympics returned to Germany with the opening ceremony at the Munich Olympic Stadium. Athletes from 121 nations marched. An 18-year-old West German policeman, Guenther Zahn, was the final torchbearer. But there was little other visible police presence as Munich tried to distance itself from the militarism that had been so pervasive in Berlin. They were supposed to be the “Games of Joy.” They proved anything but.

Germans Keep Drug Watch

Olympic officials unveiled a drug-testing plan much more aggressive than those conducted in 1964 in Tokyo and ’68 in Mexico City as speculation about use of steroids by athletes intensified.

*--* QUOTES

*--*

“Two Faces of Imperialism--Genocide in Vietnam and a Peace Show in Munich.”

--Sign carried by one of 5,000 protesters in Munich rally during ceremony

*--* POSTSCRIPT

*--*

She was 38 and had given birth to her four children by the time of the 1972 Olympics. But Olga Connolly, famous for so many things Olympic, made the U.S. team again in the discus.

It would be her fifth Games, and her last moment on the international sports stage. But as in all things with Connolly, it would not be a quiet goodbye.

“Things with me always get so complicated,” she said last week. “I make them that way.”

In 1956, Olga Fikotova traveled from her home in Czechoslovakia to the Melbourne Olympics, won the gold medal and fell in love with U.S. hammer thrower Harold Connolly. She moved to California, got married, had her children and kept on throwing the discus at an international level, despite never winning another Olympic medal.

By the time she qualified for the U.S. team again in ‘72, she had become one of the world’s leading athletic spokespersons. In the early ‘70s, she spoke out against the war in Vietnam. She belonged to a group called Another Mother for Peace. The early ‘70s were not a time when stodgy Olympic officials easily accepted outspoken athletes.

What really made them nervous was when the other U.S. Olympic sport captains elected Connolly to carry the U.S. flag into the opening ceremony.

“When the Olympic Committee heard I had been elected to carry the flag, they were silent for about five minutes,” said Connolly, now 68, divorced since 1973 and a resident of Newport Beach. “Our marching orders had been pretty clear going into those Games. Bring lots of medals home and stay away from politics.

“Of course I couldn’t do that.”

U.S. Olympic officials, Connolly said, failed to tell her about an opening ceremony rehearsal, almost causing her to lose her chance to carry the flag. Then there was some discussion that the flag was too heavy for a woman to carry all the way around the stadium.

That discussion further inspired Connolly to not only carry the flag, but do so one-handed.

“When I finished and finally left the stadium, everybody kind of dispersed,” she recalled, “and it was an empty feeling. I wanted to share this with somebody, and there was nobody around.

“So ... I ran into the Associated Press building and told them I wanted to tell my story and they let me dictate what I had to say into a machine. And the story went out.

“The next day, the headline in the New York Times said: ‘THE FLAG BELONGS TO EVERYBODY.’ ”

Bill Dwyre