1972 Summer Olympics
The 1972 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XX Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from August 26 to September 11, 1972. The sporting nature of the event was overshadowed by the Munich massacre in the second week, in which eleven Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German police officer at Olympic village were killed by Black September terrorists; the 1972 Summer Olympics were the second Summer Olympics to be held in Germany, after the 1936 Games in Berlin, which had taken place under the Nazi regime. The West German Government had been eager to have the Munich Olympics present a democratic and optimistic Germany to the world, as shown by the Games' official motto, "Die Heiteren Spiele", or "the cheerful Games"; the logo of the Games was a blue solar logo by Otl Aicher, the designer and director of the visual conception commission. The Olympic mascot, the dachshund "Waldi", was the first named Olympic mascot; the Olympic Fanfare was composed by Herbert Rehbein.
The Olympic Park is based on Frei Otto's plans. The competition sites, designed by architect Günther Behnisch, included the Olympic swimming hall, the Olympics Hall and the Olympic Stadium, an Olympic village close to the park; the design of the stadium was considered revolutionary, with sweeping canopies of acrylic glass stabilized by metal ropes, used on such a large scale for the first time. Munich won its Olympic bid on April 26, 1966, at the 64th IOC Session at Rome, over bids presented by Detroit and Montréal. Montréal would host the following Olympic games in 1976; the Games were overshadowed by what has come to be known as the "Munich massacre". Just before dawn on September 5, a group of eight members of the Black September terrorist organization broke into the Olympic Village and took eleven Israeli athletes and officials hostage in their apartments. Two of the hostages who resisted were killed in the first moments of the break-in. Late in the evening of September 5 that same day, the terrorists and their nine remaining hostages were transferred by helicopter to the military airport of Fürstenfeldbruck, ostensibly to board a plane bound for an undetermined Arab country.
The German authorities planned to ambush them there, but underestimated the numbers of their opposition and were thus undermanned. During a botched rescue attempt, all of the Israeli hostages were killed. Four of them were shot incinerated when one of the terrorists detonated a grenade inside the helicopter in which the hostages were sitting; the 5 remaining hostages were machine-gunned to death. All but three of the terrorists were killed as well. Although arrested and imprisoned pending trial, they were released by the West German government on October 29, 1972, in exchange for a hijacked Lufthansa jet. Two of those three were hunted down and assassinated by the Mossad. Jamal Al-Gashey, believed to be the sole survivor, is still living today in hiding in an unspecified African country with his wife and two children; the Olympic events were suspended several hours after the initial attack, but once the incident was concluded, Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee president, declared that "the Games must go on".
A memorial ceremony was held in the Olympic stadium, the competitions resumed after a stoppage of 24 hours. The attack prompted heightened security at subsequent Olympics beginning with the 1976 Winter Olympics. Security at Olympics was heightened further beginning with the 2002 Winter Olympics, as they were the first to take place after the 2001 September 11 attacks; the massacre led the German federal government to re-examine its anti-terrorism policies, which at the time were dominated by a pacifist approach adopted after World War II. This led to the creation of the elite counter-terrorist unit GSG 9, similar to the British SAS, it led Israel to launch a campaign known as Operation Wrath of God, in which those suspected of involvement were systematically tracked down and assassinated. The events of the Munich massacre were chronicled in the Oscar-winning documentary, One Day in September. An account of the aftermath is dramatized in three films: the 1976 made-for-TV movie 21 Hours at Munich, the 1986 made-for-TV movie Sword of Gideon and Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich.
In her film 1972, Artist Sarah Morris interviews Dr. Georg Sieber, a former police psychiatrist who advised the Olympics' security team, about the events and aftermath of Black September; these were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Avery Brundage. Mark Spitz set a world record when he won seven gold medals in a single Olympics, bringing his lifetime total to nine. Being Jewish, Spitz was asked to leave Munich before the closing ceremonies for his own protection, after fears arose that he would be an additional target of those responsible for the Munich massacre. Spitz's record stood until 2008, when it was beaten by Michael Phelps who won eight gold medals in the pool. Olga Korbut, a Soviet gymnast, became a media star after winning a gold medal in the team competition event, failing to win in the individual all-around after a fall, winning two gold medals in the Balance Beam and the floor exercise events. In the final of the men's basketball, the United States lost to the Soviet Union in what is widely
Moscow
Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits, 17 million within the urban area and 20 million within the metropolitan area. Moscow is one of Russia's federal cities. Moscow is the major political, economic and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city on the European continent. By broader definitions, Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the 14th largest metro area, the 18th largest agglomeration, the 14th largest urban area, the 11th largest by population within city limits worldwide. According to Forbes 2013, Moscow has been ranked as the ninth most expensive city in the world by Mercer and has one of the world's largest urban economies, being ranked as an alpha global city according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, is one of the fastest growing tourist destinations in the world according to the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index. Moscow is the coldest megacity on Earth.
It is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe. By its territorial expansion on July 1, 2012 southwest into the Moscow Oblast, the area of the capital more than doubled, going from 1,091 to 2,511 square kilometers, resulting in Moscow becoming the largest city on the European continent by area. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, making it Europe's most populated inland city; the city is well known for its architecture its historic buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral with its colorful architectural style. With over 40 percent of its territory covered by greenery, it is one of the greenest capitals and major cities in Europe and the world, having the largest forest in an urban area within its borders—more than any other major city—even before its expansion in 2012; the city has served as the capital of a progression of states, from the medieval Grand Duchy of Moscow and the subsequent Tsardom of Russia to the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union and the contemporary Russian Federation.
Moscow is a seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, a medieval city-fortress, today the residence for work of the President of Russia. The Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament sit in the city. Moscow is considered the center of Russian culture, having served as the home of Russian artists and sports figures and because of the presence of museums and political institutions and theatres; the city is served by a transit network, which includes four international airports, nine railway terminals, numerous trams, a monorail system and one of the deepest underground rapid transit systems in the world, the Moscow Metro, the fourth-largest in the world and largest outside Asia in terms of passenger numbers, the busiest in Europe. It is recognized as one of the city's landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. Moscow has acquired a number of epithets, most referring to its size and preeminent status within the nation: The Third Rome, the Whitestone One, the First Throne, the Forty Soroks.
Moscow is one of the twelve Hero Cities. The demonym for a Moscow resident is "москвич" for male or "москвичка" for female, rendered in English as Muscovite; the name "Moscow" is abbreviated "MSK". The name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river. Finno-Ugric Merya and Muroma people, who were among the several Early Eastern Slavic tribes which inhabited the area, called the river Mustajoki, it has been suggested. The most linguistically well grounded and accepted is from the Proto-Balto-Slavic root *mŭzg-/muzg- from the Proto-Indo-European *meu- "wet", so the name Moskva might signify a river at a wetland or a marsh, its cognates include Russian: музга, muzga "pool, puddle", Lithuanian: mazgoti and Latvian: mazgāt "to wash", Sanskrit: májjati "to drown", Latin: mergō "to dip, immerse". In many Slavic countries Moskov is a surname, most common in Bulgaria, Russia and North Macedonia. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa.
The original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. As with other nouns of that declension, it had been undergoing a morphological transformation at the early stage of the development of the language, as a result the first written mentions in the 12th century were Московь, Moskovĭ, Москви, Moskvi, Москвe/Москвѣ, Moskve/Moskvě. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, a result of morphological generalisation with the numerous Slavic ā-stem nouns. However, the form Moskovĭ has left some traces in many other languages, such as English: Moscow, German: Moskau, French: Moscou, Georgian: მოსკოვი, Latvian: Maskava, Ottoman Turkish: Moskov, Tatar: Мәскәү, Mäskäw, Kazakh: Мәскеу, Mäskew, Chuvash: Мускав, etc. In a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed it became a collo
Judo at the 1980 Summer Olympics
The Judo competition at the 1980 Summer Olympics was the first time that the medal count was not dominated by Japan, since the country joined the boycott of the games because of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Medals were awarded to male judoka in eight competitions, seven weight classes and the open competition — two more than in 1976. All events were held at the Palace of Sports of the Central Lenin Stadium at Luzhniki; the schedule started on July 27 and ended on August 2. A total of 182 judokas from 42 nations competed at the Moscow Games "Olympic Medal Winners". International Olympic Committee. Retrieved 2008-02-20. Sports123.com
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
Guinea
Guinea the Republic of Guinea, is a west-coastal country in West Africa. Known as French Guinea, the modern country is sometimes referred to as Guinea-Conakry in order to distinguish it from other countries with "Guinea" in the name and the eponymous region, such as Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Guinea has an area of 245,860 square kilometres; the sovereign state of Guinea is a republic with a president, directly elected by the people and is head of state and head of government. The unicameral Guinean National Assembly is the legislative body of the country, its members are directly elected by the people; the judicial branch is led by the Guinea Supreme Court, the highest and final court of appeal in the country. The country is named after the Guinea region. Guinea is a traditional name for the region of Africa, it ends at the Sahel. The English term Guinea comes directly from the Portuguese word Guiné, which emerged in the mid-15th century to refer to the lands inhabited by the Guineus, a generic term for the black African peoples below the Senegal River, as opposed to the'tawny' Zenaga Berbers, above it, whom they called Azenegues or Moors.
Guinea is a predominantly Islamic country, with Muslims representing 85 percent of the population. Guinea's people belong to twenty-four ethnic groups. French, the official language of Guinea, is the main language of communication in schools, in government administration, the media, but more than twenty-four indigenous languages are spoken. Guinea's economy is dependent on agriculture and mineral production, it is the world's second largest producer of bauxite, has rich deposits of diamonds and gold. The country was at the core of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Human rights in Guinea remain a controversial issue. In 2011 the United States government claimed that torture by security forces, abuse of women and children were ongoing abuses of human rights; the land, now Guinea belonged to a series of African empires until France colonized it in the 1890s, made it part of French West Africa. Guinea declared its independence from France on 2 October 1958. From independence until the presidential election of 2010, Guinea was governed by a number of autocratic rulers.
For the origin of the name "Guinea" see Guinea § Etymology. What is now Guinea was on the fringes of the major West African empires; the earliest, the Ghana Empire, grew on trade but fell after repeated incursions of the Almoravids. It was in this period; the Sosso kingdom flourished in the resulting void but the Mali Empire came to prominence when Soundiata Kéïta defeated the Sosso ruler Soumangourou Kanté at the Battle of Kirina in c. 1235. The Mali Empire was ruled by Mansa, the most famous being Kankou Moussa, who made a famous hajj to Mecca in 1324. Shortly after his reign the Mali Empire began to decline and was supplanted by its vassal states in the 15th century; the most successful of these was the Songhai Empire, which expanded its power from about 1460 and surpassed the Mali Empire in both territory and wealth. It continued to prosper until a civil war over succession followed the death of Askia Daoud in 1582; the weakened empire fell to invaders from Morocco at the Battle of Tondibi just three years later.
The Moroccans proved unable to rule the kingdom however, it split into many small kingdoms. After the fall of the major West African empires, various kingdoms existed in. Fulani Muslims migrated to Futa Jallon in Central Guinea and established an Islamic state from 1735 to 1898 with a written constitution and alternate rulers; the Wassoulou or Wassulu empire was a short-lived empire, led by Samori Toure in the predominantly Malinké area of what is now upper Guinea and southwestern Mali. It moved to Ivory Coast before being conquered by the French; the slave trade came to the coastal region of Guinea with European traders in the 16th century. Slaves were exported to work elsewhere in the triangular trade. Guinea's colonial period began with French military penetration into the area in the mid-19th century. French domination was assured by the defeat in 1898 of the armies of Samori Touré, Mansa of the Ouassoulou state and leader of Malinké descent, which gave France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas.
France negotiated Guinea's present boundaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the British for Sierra Leone, the Portuguese for their Guinea colony, Liberia. Under the French, the country formed the Territory of Guinea within French West Africa, administered by a governor general resident in Dakar. Lieutenant governors administered the individual colonies, including Guinea. In 1958, the French Fourth Republic collapsed due to political instability and its failures in dealing with its colonies Indochina and Algeria; the founding of a Fifth Republic was supported by the French people, while French President Charles de Gaulle made it clear on 8 August 1958 that France's colonies were to be given a stark choice between more autonomy in a new French Community or immediate independence in the referendum to be held on 28 September 1958. The other colonies chose the former but Guinea—under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré whose Democratic Party of Guinea had won 56 of 60 seats in 1957 territorial elections — voted overwhelmingly for independence.
The French withdrew and
1980 Summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Moscow, Soviet Union, in present-day Russia. The 1980 Games were the first Olympic Games to be staged in Eastern Europe, remain the only Summer Olympics held there, as well as the first Olympic Games to be held in a Slavic language-speaking country, they were the first Olympic Games to be held in a socialist country, the only Summer Games to be held in such a country until 2008 in Beijing, China. These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC Presidency of 3rd Baron Killanin. Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. Led by the United States, 66 countries boycotted the games because of the Soviet–Afghan War; some athletes from some of the boycotting countries participated in the games under the Olympic Flag. The Soviet Union would boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics; the only two cities to bid for the 1980 Summer Olympics were Los Angeles. The choice between them was made on 23 October 1974 in the 75th IOC Session in Austria.
Los Angeles would host the 1984 Summer Olympics. Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. Of the eighty participating nations, eight nations made their first appearance at this Games – Angola, Cyprus, Mozambique and Seychelles. None of these nations won a medal. Although half of the 24 countries that boycotted the 1976 Summer Olympics participated in the Moscow Games, the 1980 Summer Olympics were disrupted by another larger, boycott led by the United States in protest at the 1979 Soviet–Afghan War; the Soviet invasion spurred Jimmy Carter to issue an ultimatum on 20 January 1980, that the US would boycott the Moscow Olympics if Soviet troops did not withdraw from Afghanistan within one month. 65 countries and regions invited did not take part in the 1980 Olympics. Many of these followed the United States' boycott initiative, while others cited economic reasons for not coming. Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini hostile to both superpowers, boycotted when the Islamic Conference condemned the invasion.
Many of the boycotting nations participated instead in the Liberty Bell Classic known as the "Olympic Boycott Games", in Philadelphia. However, the nations that did compete had won 71 percent of all medals, 71 percent of the gold medals, at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal; this was in part because of state-run doping programs, developed in the Eastern Bloc countries. As a form of protest against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, fifteen countries marched in the Opening Ceremony with the Olympic Flag instead of their national flags, the Olympic Flag and Olympic Hymn were used at medal ceremonies when athletes from these countries won medals. Competitors from three countries – New Zealand and Spain – competed under the flags of their respective National Olympic Committees; some of these teams that marched under flags other than their national flags were depleted by boycotts by individual athletes, while some athletes did not participate in the march. The impact of the boycott was mixed.
Some events, such as swimming and field, basketball, field hockey and equestrian sports, were hard hit. Whilst competitors from 36 countries became Olympic medalists, the great majority of the medals were taken by the host country and East Germany in what was the most skewed medal tally since 1904. There were 203 events – more than at any previous Olympics. 36 World records, 39 European records and 74 Olympic records were set at the games. In total, this was more records. New Olympic records were set 241 times over the course of the competitions and world records were beaten 97 times. A 1989 report by a committee of the Australian Senate claimed that "there is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games not a gold medal winner...who is not on one sort of drug or another: several kinds. The Moscow Games might well have been called the Chemists' Games". A member of the IOC Medical Commission, Manfred Donike ran additional tests with a new technique for identifying abnormal levels of testosterone by measuring its ratio to epitestosterone in urine.
Twenty percent of the specimens he tested, including those from sixteen gold medalists would have resulted in disciplinary proceedings had the tests been official. The results of Donike's unofficial tests convinced the IOC to add his new technique to their testing protocols; the first documented case of "blood doping" occurred at the 1980 Summer Olympics as a runner was transfused with two pints of blood before winning medals in the 5000 m and 10,000 m. Major broadcasters of the Games were USSR State TV and Radio and Intervision. TV Asahi with 68 cards provided coverage for Japan, while OTI representing Latin America received 59 cards and the Seven Network provided coverage for Australia. NBC, which had intended to be another major broadcaster, canceled its coverage in response to the U. S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, became a minor broadcaster with 56 accreditation cards, although the network did air highlights and recaps of the games on a regular basis. (ABC aired scenes of the opening ceremony during its Nightline program, promised highlights each night, but the next night, the show announced that they could not air any
1976 Summer Olympics
The 1976 Summer Olympics called the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event in Montreal, Quebec, in 1976, the first Olympic Games held in Canada. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and Los Angeles, it was the first and, so far, only Summer Olympic Games. Calgary and Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1988 and 2010, respectively. Twenty-nine countries African, boycotted the Montreal Games when the International Olympic Committee refused to ban New Zealand, after the New Zealand national rugby union team had toured South Africa earlier in 1976 in defiance of the United Nations' calls for a sporting embargo; the vote occurred on May 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, Netherlands. While Los Angeles and Moscow were viewed as the favourites given that they represented the world's two main powers, many of the smaller countries supported Montreal as an underdog and as a neutral site for the games.
Los Angeles was eliminated after the first round and Montreal won in the second round. Moscow would go on to host Los Angeles the 1984 Summer Olympics. One blank vote was cast in the final round. Toronto had made its third attempt for the Olympics but failed to get the support of the Canadian Olympic Committee, which selected Montreal instead. Robert Bourassa the Premier of Quebec, first asked Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to advise Canada's monarch, Elizabeth II, to attend the opening of the games. However, Bourassa became unsettled about how unpopular the move might be with sovereigntists in the province, annoying Trudeau, who had made arrangements; the leader of the Parti Québécois at the time, René Lévesque, sent his own letter to Buckingham Palace, asking the Queen to refuse her prime minister's request, though she did not oblige Lévesque as he was out of his jurisdiction in offering advice to the Sovereign. In 1976, succumbing to pressure from the Communist Chinese, issued an order barring Taiwan from participating as China in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, although technically it was a matter for the IOC.
His action strained relations with the United States – from President Ford, future President Carter and the press. The Oxford Olympics Study estimates the outturn cost of the Montreal 1976 Summer Olympics at USD 6.1 billion in 2015-dollars and cost overrun at 720% in real terms. This includes sports-related costs only, that is, operational costs incurred by the organizing committee for the purpose of staging the Games, e.g. expenditures for technology, workforce, security, catering and medical services, direct capital costs incurred by the host city and country or private investors to build, e.g. the competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, media and press center, which are required to host the Games. Indirect capital costs are not included, such as for road, rail, or airport infrastructure, or for hotel upgrades or other business investment incurred in preparation for the Games but not directly related to staging the Games; the cost overrun for Montreal 1976 is the highest cost overrun on record for any Olympics.
The cost and cost overrun for Montreal 1976 compares with costs of USD 4.6 billion and a cost overrun of 51% for Rio 2016 and USD 15 billion and 76% for London 2012. Average cost for the Summer Games from 1960 to 2016 is 5.2 billion 2015 US dollars, average cost overrun is 176%. Much of the cost overruns were caused by the Conseil des métiers de la construction union whose leader was André "Dede" Desjardins, who kept the construction site in "anarchic disorder" as part of a shakedown; the French architect Roger Taillibert who designed the Olympic stadium recounted in his 2000 book Notre Cher Stade Olympique that he and Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau tried hard to buy off Desjardins taking him to a lunch at the exclusive Ritz-Carlton hotel in a vain attempt to end the "delays". Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa made some sort of secret deal to buy off Desjardins, which allowed work to proceed. Taillibert wrote in Notre Cher Stade Olympique "If the Olympic Games took place, it was thanks to Dede Desjardins.
What irony!" The opening ceremony of the 1976 Summer Olympic Games was held on Saturday, July 17, 1976, at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec in front of an audience of some 73,000 in the stadium, an estimated half billion watching on television. Following an air show by the Canadian Forces Air Command's Snowbirds aerobatic flight demonstration squadron in the sunny skies above the stadium, the ceremony began at 3:00 pm with a trumpet fanfare and the arrival of Elizabeth II, as Queen of Canada; the Queen was accompanied by Michael Morris, Lord Killanin, President of the International Olympic Committee, was greeted to an orchestral rendition of'O Canada', an arrangement that for many years would be used in schools across the country as well as in the daily sign off of TV broadcasts in the country. The queen entered the Royal Box with her consort, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, her son, Prince Andrew, she joined a number of Canadian and Olympic dignitaries, including: Jules Léger, Governor General of Canada, his wife, Gabrielle.
The parade o
