Olympic Changing Moment

Running head: OLYMPIC CHANGING MOMENT
Olympic Changing Moment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1OLYMPIC CHANGING MOMENT
The modern Olympic Games is the most popular international sporting events in the
world, presenting summer and winter sports competitions where thousands of athletes from
more than 200 nations participate from around the world in a variety of events (Cashman,
2002). There were many controversies in this most coveted sports tournament in the world,
like games boycott, doping by athlete or athletes, not allowing a country to participate in the
games and many more. Our aim will be to find out an Olympic changing moment or issue,
and the purpose will be to investigate the future steps, if any, followed in the Olympics due to
that particular incident.
One such incident happened in the 1968 summer Olympic games (Gilbert, 2014). The
world was in a disturbed state as the War in Vietnam faltered, Martin Luther King and Robert
F. Kennedy has been killed, riots in racism ripped the United States and some more incidents
happened. Taking into account those massive incidents, the world reached Mexico City to
cherish the mega event. Students from Mexico had started demanding democracy throughout
the summer. Just 10 days prior to the opening ceremony of the games, a large number of
students gathered in one of the capital’s central squares, and the government army opened
fire. It created a havoc, as many as 300 rioters were killed and more than 1,000 were injured
(Boykoff, 2011). Czech Republic’s gymnast and loyalist Vera Caslavska, who was hiding
from the time when Soviet Union’s tanks curled into her country to put down the Prague
Spring, risked her autonomy and went on to compete in the games. When Caslavska won a
gold medal with a Soviet gymnast, she clearly curved down her head while the Soviet
national anthem was playing (Palmer, 2013). However, the podium saw arguably the most
memorable Olympic protest of all time – Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two American
athletes, who won gold and bronze medals in the 200 metres respectively, gave a silent and
significant Black Power Salute when the US national anthem ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’
had been played. Both of them were not wearing any shoes, to symbolise black poverty while