|
Did you know?
- Only four athletes in the history of the Olympic Games have won in the same organization the 5,000m and 10,000m events. These events were first included in the Olympic programme in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. In that organization the winner of the 5,000m and 10,000m events was Hannes Kolehmainen, the long distance pioneer of the "Finnish school". Four decades later, in 1952, Emil Zatopek confirmed his predominance in the long distances by winning not only the 5,000m and the 10,000m, but also the marathon, an accomplishment that has not been repeated by any other athlete. In the following organization, the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Soviet Vladimir Kuts became the third athlete to win the two events. However, none of the above three athletes managed to repeat their victories in the 5,000m and 10,000m in two consecutive organizations. The only one who has done this is the Finn Lasse Viren, in Munich (1972) and in Montreal (1976).
- Mohamed Gammoudi was considered one of the favourites in the 10,000m event. In the 1968 Olympics the Tunisian athlete had won the gold medal in the 5,000m and the silver in the 10,000m. In 1972 he won the silver medal in the 5,000m finishing second to Lasse Viren. The collision with Viren and their fall during the 10,000m race stopped Gammoudi from contending for yet another Olympic medal. Nevertheless, that accident did not hinder Viren, who won the first and most spectacular among the four gold medals in the long distances in two consecutive Olympic organizations, an accomplishment that no other athlete has repeated.
- One year before the Olympic Games of 1972, Lasse Viren did not make it to the first important international games in which he participated. More precisely, in the European championship that was held in Helsinki in 1971, Viren finished 7th in the 5,000m and 17th in the 10,000m. The winner of both the 5,000m and 10,000m events was his compatriot Juha VŠŠtŠinen. In the next European championship, held in 1974, Viren won the third place in the 5,000m. However, his presence in the Olympic Games, both in 1972 and in 1976 was impressive, to say the least, with the unique double victory in the history of the Olympics in the 5,000m and 10,000m events.
- The smallest difference in a basketball final was only 1 point. It was in 1972, in the only final where the United States were defeated. The final score was 51-50 in favour of the Soviet Union. The lowest score in a final was recorded in the first organization which included basketball, in 1936. Then the United States defeated Canada with a score 19-8. In 1936 the prevalence of the USA over France was very easy and the biggest difference in the history of finals (65-21) was recorded. In the next five Olympic organizations the USA competed with the Soviet Union prevailing quite easily every time, something which is obvious from the scores: 36-25 (1952), 89-55 (1956), 81-57 (1960), 73-59 (1964), 65-50 (1968).
- Only twice in the history of the Olympic Games did the United States not participate in the basketball final. The first time was in 1980 due to the Moscow Olympics boycott. Then the team of Yugoslavia defeated Italy. The second time was in 1988, when the United States did not make it to the final having been defeated in the preliminary games by Yugoslavia, which was defeated in the final by the Soviet Union. This was the second defeat of the USA and the last ever since. Besides, after 1992 the use of basketball players from the NBA professional championship was allowed, in a sport where contesting the supremacy of the American athletes has only been the exception, the unexpected.
- 8 athletes in the history of the Olympic Games have won a gold medal in the same organization both in the 100m and the 200m events. In 23 organizations, seeing that the 200m first appeared in 1900 (Paris), the "double" in the sprints has been achieved by six athletes from the USA (Archie Hahn 1904, Ralph Craig 1912, Edie Tolan 1932, Jesse Owens 1936, Bobby Morrow 1956, Carl Lewis 1984), one from Canada (Percy Williams 1928) and one from the Soviet Union (Valeriy Borzov 1972). It should be noted that the 60m event was included in the organizations of 1900 and 1904. Archie Hahn was the winner in 1904.
- Sergei Belov was the athlete who lit the Olympic flame in Moscow in 1980. Belov, born on 23 January 1944, is the greatest personality of the Soviet Union in basketball. He has participated in four Olympic Games (1968, 1972, 1976, 1980) winning one gold and three bronze medals. He has also won with the team of the Soviet Union four European championships (1967, 1969, 1971, 1979), twice (1975, 1979) he was in the final of the same organization, and he has won two world championships (1967, 1974). He was a player in the national team from 1967 until 1980. From the early 1990s he was trainer of the national team of Russia leading his team to quite a few successes.
- Teofilo Stevenson is not the only Cuban boxer, three times Olympic winner, who has turned down proposals to participate in the world professional championship. In the mid-1990s, Felix Savon turned down a ten million dollars proposition in order to participate in a boxing match against Mike Tyson. Savon first participated in the Olympics in 1992, since Cuba abstained from the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Then, in 1992, he won the first of the three gold medals in a row in the Olympic Games. Savon, the Hungarian Laszlo Papp and the compatriot of the former, Teofilo Stevenson, are the only boxers in the history of the Olympic Games with three consecutive victories in the Olympic Games. The difference between the two Cubans and Papp is that the Hungarian concluded his career as a professional.
- In the 1972 Olympics it was the first time that the winner in the pole vault was not from the United States. The pole vault was one of the contests that made their appearance as early as in the first modern Olympic Games, in Athens in 1896. The first Olympic winner of the event was the American William Hoyt. From then the athletes from the USA won the gold medal in all the organizations, until 1972, Bob Richards being the only athlete to date who won two gold medals (1952, 1956). In 1972, however, the winner was Wolfang Nordwig, an athlete from the Federal Republic of Germany. In this way, the athletes from the USA ceased to lead the contest, which was dominated by athletes from Poland (1976, 1980), France (1984, 1996), the Soviet Union (1988) and Russia (1992). However, in Sydney the winner was once again an athlete from the United States.
|
