1978 Commonwealth Games
The 1978 Commonwealth Games were held in Edmonton, Canada from 3 to 12 August 1978, two years after the 1976 Summer Olympics were held in Montreal, Quebec. They were boycotted by Nigeria, in protest of New Zealand's sporting contacts with apartheid-era South Africa, as well as by Uganda, in protest of alleged Canadian hostility towards the government of Idi Amin; the Bid Election was held at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. This was the first Commonwealth Games; these were the first Commonwealth Games to be named having dropped British. 46 teams were represented at the 1978 Games.. * Host nation TrackRoad PistolRifleShotgun Men's eventsWomen's events Commonwealth Stadium: Athletics and Closing Ceremonies University of Alberta Arena: Badminton Commonwealth Bowls: Lawn Bowling Edmonton Gardens: Boxing Argyll Velodrome: Cycling Northlands Coliseum: Gymnastics Strathcona Shooting Range: Shooting Kinsmen Aquatic Centre: Swimming and Diving Jubilee Auditorium: Weightlifting University of Alberta Gym: Wrestling Commonwealth Games Official Site A Brief History from the Delhi 2010 site 1978 Commonwealth Games – Australian Commonwealth Games official website Going the Distance, an NFB documentary
Athletics at the 1896 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 metres
The men's 100 metres race was the first event run at the modern Olympics, on 6 April 1896. It was the shortest race on the Athletics at the 1896 Summer Olympics programme. 21 athletes were entered in the first round, divided into three heats of seven runners, but six of them withdrew. The top two athletes in each heat advanced to the final. 15 athletes from 8 nations competed. This was the standing world record prior to the 1896 Summer Olympics. In the first heat, Francis Lane set the inaugural Olympic Record of 12.2 seconds, tied in Heat 2 by Thomas Curtis. Thomas Burke ran 11.8 seconds, which stood as the Olympic Record until the 1900 Olympics. The first round of heats took place on 6 April; the first heat of the 100 metres was the first competition held in the Games. Francis Lane won the first heat. All heats were won by athletes from the United States. Both Burke and Hofmann were more well known for middle-distance events rather than sprinting. Burke's time of 11.8s became the standing Olympic record.
It is not clear which athlete received which place between the fifth finishers. The final of the 100 metre race, run on 10 April, involved the six runners who had finished in the top two of their preliminary heats. Thomas Curtis withdrew to save himself for the 110 metre hurdles, the next race on the program and which he won. Burke beat his companion from Hofmann, by two meters. Lane and Szokolyi dead-heated with Chalkokondylis six inches behind them. Lane and Szokolyi are both considered to be bronze medallists by the International Olympic Committee. Lampros, S. P.. G.. J. & Anninos, C.. The Olympic Games: BC 776 – AD 1896. Athens: Charles Beck. Mallon, Bill & Widlund, Ture; the 1896 Olympic Games. Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. Jefferson: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0379-9. Smith, Michael Llewellyn. Olympics in Athens 1896; the Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. London: Profile Books. ISBN 1-86197-342-X. Wallechinsky, David; the Complete Book of the Olympics. Crawfordsville, Indiana: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
ISBN 0-14-006632-2
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
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event, held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, United States. This was the second time that Los Angeles had hosted the Games, the first being in 1932. California was the home state of the incumbent U. S. President Ronald Reagan, who opened the Games; the logo for the 1984 Games, branded "Stars in Motion", featured red and blue stars arranged horizontally and struck through with alternating streaks. The official mascot of the Games was Sam the Olympic Eagle; these were the first Summer Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Juan Antonio Samaranch. The 1984 Games were boycotted by a total of fourteen Eastern Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union and East Germany, in response to the American-led boycott of the previous 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Iran and Libya chose to boycott the Games for unrelated reasons. Despite the field being depleted in certain sports due to the boycott, 140 National Olympic Committees took part, a record at the time.
The 1984 Summer Olympics are considered to be the most financially successful modern Olympics and serve as an example of how to run the model Olympic Games. As a result of low construction costs, coupled with a reliance on private corporate funding, the 1984 Olympic Games generated a profit of more than $250 million. On July 18, 2009, a 25th anniversary celebration was held in the main Olympic Stadium; the celebration included a speech by the former president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, Peter Ueberroth, a re-creation of the lighting of the cauldron. Los Angeles will host the Summer Olympics for the third time in 2028. After the murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists in Munich and the significant financial debts of Montreal, few cities by the late 1970s were willing to bid for the Summer Olympics. Only two cities made serious bids for the 1984 Summer Games, but before the final selection of a "winning" city in 1978, the bid from Tehran was withdrawn as a result of Iran's policy changes following the Iranian Revolution and a change in the country's ruling system.
Hence, the selection process for the 1984 Summer Olympics consisted of a single finalized bid from Los Angeles, which the International Olympic Committee accepted. The selection was made at the 80th IOC Session in Athens on 18 May 1978. Los Angeles had unsuccessfully bid for the two previous Summer Olympics, for 1976 and 1980; the United States Olympic Committee had submitted at least one bid for every Olympics since 1944, but had not succeeded since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, the previous time only a single bid had been issued for the Summer Olympics. The 1984 Olympic Torch Relay began in New York City and ended in Los Angeles, traversing 33 states and the District of Columbia. Unlike torch relays, the torch was continuously carried by runners on foot; the route involved 3,636 runners. Noted athlete O. J. Simpson was among the runners. Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, carried the torch into the Coliseum, completed a lap around the track handed it off to the final runner, Rafer Johnson, winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Summer Olympics.
With the torch, he touched off the flame which passed through a specially designed flammable Olympic logo, igniting all five rings. The flame passed up to cauldron atop the peristyle and remained aflame for the duration of the Games. John Williams composed the theme for the Olympiad, "Olympic Fanfare and Theme"; this piece won a Grammy for Williams and became one of the most well-known musical themes of the Olympic Games, along with Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream". Composer Bill Conti wrote a song to inspire the weightlifters called "Power". An album, The Official Music of the XXIII Olympiad—Los Angeles 1984, featured three of those tracks along with sports themes written for the occasion by popular musical artists including Foreigner, Loverboy, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Christopher Cross, Philip Glass and Giorgio Moroder; the Brazilian composer Sérgio Mendes produced a special song for the 1984 Olympic Games, "Olympia," from his 1984 album Confetti. A choir of one thousand voices was assembled of singers in the region.
All were volunteers from nearby churches and universities. Etta James performed ``. Vicki McClure along with the International Children's Choir of Long Beach sang "Reach Out and Touch". Lionel Richie performed a 9-minute version of his hit single "All Night Long" at the closing ceremonies; the 1984 Summer Olympics was preceded by the 10-week-long adjunct Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival, which opened on June 2 and ended on August 12. It provided more than 400 performances by 146 theater and music companies, representing every continent and 18 countries, it was organized by then-CalArts President Robert Fitzpatrick. The opening ceremony featured the arrival of Bill Suitor by means of the Bell Aerosystems rocket pack; the United States Army Band formed the Olympic rings to start the opening ceremony. The United States topped the medal count for the first time since 1968, winning a record 83 gold medals and surpassing the Soviet Union’s total of 80 golds at the 1980 Summer Olympics; as a result of an IOC agreement designating the Republic of China in the name of Chinese Taipei, the Peo
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
1977 Central American and Caribbean Championships in Athletics
The 1977 Central American and Caribbean Championships in Athletics were held at the Estadio Heriberto Jara Corona in Xalapa, Mexico between 5–7 August. A = affected by altitude Men Results – GBR Athletics Women Results – GBR Athletics
Sport of athletics
Athletics is a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, walking race; the results of racing events are decided by finishing position, while the jumps and throws are won by the athlete that achieves the highest or furthest measurement from a series of attempts. The simplicity of the competitions, the lack of a need for expensive equipment, makes athletics one of the most competed sports in the world. Athletics is an individual sport, with the exception of relay races and competitions which combine athletes' performances for a team score, such as cross country. Organized athletics are traced back to the Ancient Olympic Games from 776 BC; the rules and format of the modern events in athletics were defined in Western Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th century, were spread to other parts of the world. Most modern top level meetings are conducted by the International Association of Athletics Federations and its member federations.
The athletics meeting forms the backbone of the Summer Olympics. The foremost international athletics meeting is the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, which incorporates track and field, marathon running and race walking. Other top level competitions in athletics include the IAAF World Cross Country Championships and the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships. Athletes with a physical disability compete at the Summer Paralympics and the World Para Athletics Championships; the word athletics is derived from the Ancient Greek ἀθλητής from ἆθλον or ἆθλος. The term was used to describe athletic contests in general – i.e. sporting competition based on human physical feats. In the 19th century, the term athletics acquired a more narrow definition in Europe and came to describe sports involving competitive running, walking and throwing; this definition continues to be the most prominent one in the United Kingdom and most of the areas of the former British Empire. Furthermore, foreign words in many Germanic and Romance languages which are related to the term athletics have a similar meaning.
In much of North America, athletics is synonymous with sports in general, maintaining a more historical usage of the term. The word "athletics" is used to refer to the sport of athletics in this region. Track and field is preferred, is used in the United States and Canada to refer to most athletics events, including racewalking and marathon running. Athletic contests in running, walking and throwing are among the oldest of all sports and their roots are prehistoric. Athletics events were depicted in the Ancient Egyptian tombs in Saqqara, with illustrations of running at the Heb Sed festival and high jumping appearing in tombs from as early as of 2250 BC; the Tailteann Games were an ancient Celtic festival in Ireland, founded circa 1800 BC, the thirty-day meeting included running and stone-throwing among its sporting events. The original and only event at the first Olympics in 776 BC was a stadium-length running event known as the stadion; this expanded to include throwing and jumping events within the ancient pentathlon.
Athletics competitions took place at other Panhellenic Games, which were founded around 500 BC. The Cotswold Olimpick Games, a sports festival which emerged in 17th century England, featured athletics in the form of sledgehammer throwing contests. Annually, from 1796 to 1798, L'Olympiade de la République was held in revolutionary France, is an early forerunner to the Modern Summer Olympic Games; the premier event of this competition was a running event, but various ancient Greek disciplines were on display. The 1796 Olympiade marked the introduction of the metric system into the sport. Athletics competitions were held about 1812 at the Royal Military College, in 1840 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire at the Royal Shrewsbury School Hunt; the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich held an organised competition in 1849, a regular series of closed meetings open only to undergraduates, was held by Exeter College, Oxford from 1850. The annual Wenlock Olympian Games, first held in 1850 in Wenlock, incorporated athletics events into its sports programme.
The first modern-style indoor athletics meetings were recorded shortly after in the 1860s, including a meet at Ashburnham Hall in London which featured four running events and a triple jump competition. The Amateur Athletic Association was established in England on 1880 as the first national body for the sport of athletics and began holding its own annual athletics competition – the AAA Championships; the United States began holding an annual national competition – the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships – first held in 1876 by the New York Athletic Club. Athletics became codified and standardized via the English AAA and other general sports organisations in the late 19th century, such as the Amateur Athletic Union and the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques. An athletics competition was included in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and it has been as one of the foremost competitions at the quadrennial multi-sport event since. For men only, the 1928 Olympics saw the introduction of women's events in the athletics programme.
Athletics is part of the Paralympic Games since the inaugural Games in 1960. Athletics has a high-profile during major championships the Olympics, but otherwise is less popular. An internation
Trinidad and Tobago
