![]() He got as close as he could to the stands and launched all of his pin badges. At the end of the start finish straight S8 400m Freestyle swimmer Matt Crabb decided he’d throw his entire handful into the on looking crowd. Before we entered the stadium we’d been given hundreds of GB pin badges to hand out to the crowd and other athletes as we paraded round. My most amusing was during the opening ceremony at the Sydney Paralympics in 2000. It was my first Paralympic gold in a second sport, having made the transition from swimming to cycling in 2006. It was special and memorable because I won by almost six seconds, smashing the world record and setting a time that was faster than the 1984 Olympic winning time. My second is winning the kilo in Beijing. Nicole Kidman, actress and Omega Ambassador I never think of the Olympics without recalling all that bloodshed. The Tlatelolco massacre, in which forces operating on behalf of the Mexican government shot down students and other protesters in the centre of the capital (44 deaths were confirmed but the toll is widely held to have been a couple of hundred more) occurred 10 days before the 1968 opening ceremony but is, of course, inextricably linked with the Games.įour years later, in Munich, 11 members of the Israeli team were taken hostage and then killed by Black September terrorists, five of whom also died amid the violence of an unsuccessful rescue attempt by German police. So, what negatives could be dark enough to prevent the memory from concentrating on those glittering positives? Drug stories would be a big part of the answer but more important would be the reporting of two slaughters. Through a contact on the Morning Star, the British communist newspaper, I was given special interview access to Juantorena and found him exceptionally impressive off the track, too. Fellow Cubans called Alberto Juantorena El Caballo (The Horse) and his thoroughbred domination of both the 400 metres and 800 metres in 1976, running in what looked like football socks stretching to just below the knee, was an unforgettable sight. He was the incarnation of grace under pressure.īut perhaps the athlete who moved me most was a man whose huge stride remained beautifully fluent while carrying an aura of overwhelming power. At peak form on the track (as when winning 1500 metres gold medals in Moscow and Los Angeles), Coe created the impression of gliding a few inches above the ground. Some of the brightest recollections involve Bob Beamon and Sebastian Coe. When Beamon annihilated the long-jump world record at the Mexico games, there was an eeriness about his defiance of gravity and before he came back to earth those of us in the stands already knew we were witnessing something almost miraculous. Positives and negatives collide as harsh contrasts in my memories of covering all the Summer Olympics between 1968 in Mexico City and 2000 in Sydney. ![]()
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