These are moments frozen in time, controversies from the past that linger today, raising questions of fairness and the nature of the Olympic spirit.
Three times the International Olympic Committee’s executive board has been asked to rewrite the past for the benefit–some say justice–of American athletes. Three times it has declined.
Roy Jones, perhaps the best boxer of his generation, is stuck with silver awarded him in Seoul in 1988.
Swimmer Rick DeMont, a 16-year-old stripped of a gold medal at the 1972 Munich Games for taking a medicine he needed to breathe, is still empty-handed.
And the 1972 U.S. basketball team is still considered runner-up to the Soviet Union. Winners at first and then, suddenly, losers.
“Sometimes,” IOC Director General Francois Carrard said in a recent interview, a piece of the Games turns out to be “tragic or dramatic. But it’s a part of history too.”
A review of the IOC Executive Board’s confidential minutes offers insight into the intricacies of Olympic politics in each case–even as they highlight the human capacity for error and arrogance as well as humility and heartbreak.
To this day the cases raise questions about institutional integrity, the sanctity of principle and the responsibility of Olympic officials to make things right, even years later.
Roy Jones: Seoul, 1988
Three days before he fought South Korea’s Park Si Hun in the championship bout of the light-heavyweight division, Jones had this to say: “I know how tough it is to get a decision [here] against a South Korean, but it doesn’t matter. If they cheat me, that’s OK. I’ll know I really won it.”In the ring Jones dominated Park. A company that was charting the fight for NBC had Jones landing 86 punches, Park only 32. Park was awarded a 3-2 decision.
“Veteran ring observers of all nationalities, reporters, referees and fans agreed that it was the worst decision they had ever seen,” Olympic historian David Wallechinsky writes in the most recent version of his authoritative book on the Olympic Games.
Park reportedly apologized to Jones, telling him through an interpreter, according to Wallechinsky: “I am sorry. I lost the fight. I feel very bad.”
There were allegations of bribes. Allegations of payback for pro-U.S. decisions at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Several journalists quoted judge Hiouad Larbi of Morocco as saying: “The American won easily. So easily, in fact, that I was positive my four fellow judges would score the fight for the American by a wide margin. So I voted for the Korean to make the score only 4-1 for the American and not embarrass the host country.”
As Wallechinsky writes, the judges from Uruguay and Uganda did the same thing.
There the matter rested until the spring of 1996, when files from the former East German secret police, the Stasi, surfaced. They hinted of murky payments–origin unknown–to boxing officials at the Seoul Games.
Later that year the U.S. Olympic Committee asked the IOC to award Jones an additional gold medal–they did not ask the IOC to take Park’s. Anita DeFrantz, the senior American in the IOC and a member of the executive board, also requested an investigation.
Then-IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch agreed, according to the minutes, adding, “What had happened in Seoul was very clear.”
Samaranch went on to say the IOC “had had problems with boxing in the past.” He said that after the Seoul Olympics, he had spoken with officials from the international boxing federation and told them the sport was “in danger of being dropped from the Olympic program” unless steps were taken “to avoid a repeat of such [judging] scandals.”
The IOC set up a task force that reported back in November 1996 and longtime IOC member Keba Mbaye of the West African nation of Senegal, who once served as a judge on the World Court in The Hague, announced the initial results:
“Everyone agreed that the final decision of the bout had been unfair to Roy Jones, as it was obvious that he ought to have won.”
The judges had been given money by their Korean hosts, Mbaye said.
Samaranch asked for a further investigation and asked Carrard to find Larbi, the judge who allegedly told reporters he had voted for Park to appease the host nation.
Jones, according to Larbi, had struck two “irregular” blows with the flat of his hand, and this “had been a factor in Mr. Larbi’s decision to award the fight to the Korean,” Carrard said. And Larbi “confirmed that he would not have judged the fight any differently today,” according to the minutes.
Faced with the conflicting information, DeFrantz offered this compromise: Since Jones “had been a good ambassador for sport,” perhaps the IOC would “consider giving him something in appreciation of the fact that he had complied with the investigators and never complained about the situation.”
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Samaranch recommended him for the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest honor. Only four other Americans have been so honored–track and field great Jesse Owens, four-time discus gold medalist Al Oerter, DeFrantz herself and tennis legend Arthur Ashe.
In September 1997, DeFrantz presented Jones with the order.
“It’s a symbol,” Jones said. “It reminds me of the person that I am. It’s a symbol of strength.”
He acknowledged, however, he would “die with a little hope in me” that the gold medal would someday be his.
Rick DeMont: Munich, 1972
DeMont had taken allergy medicines since he was a young boy. When he qualified that summer for the U.S. Olympic team, he was asked to fill out a standard medical form listing any medications he was taking and did so.
Apparently, the U.S. team physicians never looked at the form before the Games.
The night before his 400-meter freestyle race, DeMont woke up wheezing and took a tablet of a drug called Marax, unaware it contained the stimulant ephedrine, which is banned by the IOC. He took another tablet the morning of the race.
That night the 16-year-old from the Bay Area raced and won by one-one hundredth of a second. Two days later DeMont, then the world record-holder in the 1,500 meters, easily swam a qualifying heat in that race. The next day he was told he had flunked doping control and would not be able to swim in the 1,500 final.
The IOC Medical Commission had reported to the executive board that DeMont “needed this drug, not for his sporting performance but to keep alive.” The commission had asked U.S. officials why they had not declared DeMont was being given the drug since “they knew it was on the prohibited list.”
The minutes say, “They were unable to give a satisfactory reply.”
The commission “had to be consistent in its work and declare the swimmer excluded,” meaning from the 1,500 final, the minutes show. The “complicated” question was what to do about the 400 meters.
The Medical Commission “recommended that [DeMont] keep the gold medal but be excluded from further participation,” which seemed “reasonable on humanitarian grounds.”
But the executive board reversed course: “Some level of consistency had to be kept.”
And DeMont was stripped of any medal.
Testifying during a congressional inquiry three years later, Douglas Roby, a U.S. IOC member, said he believed DeMont would have had his gold if the team doctor had simply “assumed responsibility for the oversight.”
In recent years DeMont has mounted several bids for redress.
In March 1996 he argued that his case was like that of an Australian swimmer, Samantha Riley, who had tested positive for a painkiller a couple months before but had not been banned. The executive board turned him down.
That same year DeMont sued the USOC. As part of a settlement later reached in the case, the USOC acknowledged last year that DeMont had disclosed his medical condition and use of Marax to its doctors but the information had not been relayed “to the proper authorities.”
DeMont, currently an assistant swim coach at the University of Arizona, had pressed the suit against the USOC because his name continued to be linked to athletes found to have used performance-enhancing drugs.
Last February the IOC considered DeMont’s case again, albeit briefly. An internal legal advisory panel reviewed the matter but declined to take action.
Last April the USOC honored DeMont, presenting him with a black leather jacket given to all U.S. Olympians. Inside, the jacket was inscribed with DeMont’s name, his events and the words, “Munich 1972.”
“It means a lot to get the support of the USOC,” DeMont said. “I’m hoping this might be a stepping-stone toward getting something similar from the IOC–if I can stay alive long enough.”
U.S. basketball: Munich, 1972
The United States had never lost a basketball game in Olympic play until the gold-medal game of the 1972 Olympics.
The records show that the Soviet Union prevailed 51-50. But there are countless numbers of people who believe the United States did not lose that game.
With three seconds to play, Doug Collins of Illinois State was fouled by the USSR’s Sako Sakandelidze. Collins, currently coach of the Washington Wizards, made two free throws to give the Americans their first lead at 50-49.
The Soviets inbounded the ball. Two seconds later the referee, a Brazilian, noted a disturbance at the scorer’s table and called a timeout.
The Soviet coach, Vladimir Kondrashkin, claimed he had called for a timeout after Collins’ first shot.
With one second to go, the Soviets were awarded a timeout. When play resumed they inbounded. Time ran out. The Americans began celebrating.
But the secretary general of the International Amateur Basketball Association, Britain’s R. William Jones, then intervened–even though he had no right to make any decisions.
He ordered the clock set back to three seconds.
The Soviets inbounded again. Ivan Edeshko threw a long pass to Sasha Belov, who scored. Now the Soviets celebrated wildly.
The basketball protest was heard by a five-man international basketball federation jury of appeal. The jury ruled against the U.S. 3-2.
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Critics saw something sinister in the outcome: This was when the Cold War was on, and the three votes against the U.S. were cast by representatives from Hungary, Poland and Cuba.The Executive Board, meeting only hours after the jury of appeal issued its decision, declined the U.S. appeal.
The U.S. basketball team boycotted the medal ceremony. To this day the team has refused to accept the silver medals.
In March 1996, the Executive Board was asked to take a fresh look. It opted to “study” the issue–board-speak for tabling the matter.
“The question is for the institution,” Carrard said in a recent interview. “Do we rewrite history?
“I think there are two things. The actual record of what happened is part of history. Someone won or someone lost. This being said, if it is recognized . . . that something wrong took place, one must look for a form of recognition of the situation.”
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Alan Abrahamson is a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune newspaper.