What Was The Worst Olympic Injustice?

[Jack1000]

Guys,

Everyone talks about the Canadian Figure Skaters getting robbed by the Russians last year or Roy Jones "loss" to the Korean Park in 1988 for boxing, but one of the worst was back in 1972 when the United States faced the Soviet Union at the Summer games in Munich Germany in the basketball finals for the gold medel.

Remember that travesty? That's the one where we had taken the lead with 3 seconds to go after the American Doug Collins sank two free throws. Everyone was going wild. The Soviets threw the ball inbounds and failed to score. A Brazilian ref called a time out when he noticed that there was a disturbance at the scorers table. The game clock still showed one second. However, the Soviet coach insisted that he had called a time out before Doug Collins made his foul shots. (Timeouts can can only be after the ball is successfully imbounded, more importantly they must be given at the exact opportunity during play and can not be executed at a later time.) For some unknown reason, the officals not only gave the Soviets their missed time out, but inexplicable put 3 seconds back on the clock instead of running out the 1 second that remained. The Soviets threw the ball in a second time, fail to score and the world thinks the United States has won! Chaos follows. Several minutes later, an Englishmen named Dr. R. William Jones comes down from the stands. He is the head of the Olympic Basketball Federation and is insisting that the Soviets (along with the Soviet coach) be given a third chance because the clock was not reset to 3 seconds! Testimoney on the appeal showed that this offical had no right to interfere in the contest as he did. So the Soviets get a third try! the clock gets reset again, the Brazilian ref tells U.S defender player Tom McMillian to back away from the Soviet inbounder. (Nothing in the rules says he had to do this) the ball is thrown "hail Mary" to the end of the court where it is caught by Russian Guard Alexander Belov. Belov blatently fouls the two American defenders by shoving them in the back, knocking them over, and scoring the fraudulent winning basket, taking the gold medel by a score of 51-50. The refs do nothing about the foul and the result stands. (Note that none of the refs in charge of the game could even speak or understand English! For a game between the word's superpowers at that time, you have to wonder how the Olympic Committee could appoint officals that could not even understand the language!)

The outraged Americans filed a protest to get the result overturned. 2 nations of the appeals committee, refuse to allow Belov's last shot to count. 3 communist nations are the deciding vote and side with the Soviets. The head of the appeals committee was from Hungary and he even had family members that were killed by the Russians during Russia's war with Hungary. He went against the United States, and we lost the appeal by a 3-2 vote. The United States refused to attend the medel ceremony and also has refused to accept the Silver Medels to this day. Not only that, but several players have put in their wills that they will not allow any of their decendents to accept the silver medels. (They sit in an Olympic vault to this day)

If you ever get a chance to see the HBO Documentary "03 From Gold" it does a great job of talking about this event. Both Russian and American viewpoints are presented. However, I think the U.S got screwed! Based on the International Rules and testimoney from the appelite committee, everything that the Soviets did after Collins made his foul shots with the time outs, the multiple resets of the clock was illegal and a violation of the rules. Very heartbreaking!

Jack

[Brian]

I read about that. A teacher at my school actually went to that game. At least we got them back by beating the Soviets in the 1980 Olympic Hockey Semifinals(?).