Olympics
Fifty years on, Germany asks for forgiveness over 1972 Munich Games attacks
Germany’s president asked for forgiveness on Monday for his country’s failure to protect Israeli athletes and team memberswho were murdered 50 years ago at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
“We cannot make right what happened,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a gathering including relatives of the dead and Israeli officials during commemorations at the airfield where a failed rescue attempt took place.
Palestinians from the Black September militant group took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage on Sept. 5, 1972.
Eleven Israelis, a German policeman and five of the Palestinian gunmen died after a stand-off at the Olympic village and the nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield.
Steinmeier said Germany should shoulder its share of responsibilities for the “catastrophic” failures to protect the athletes and for taking decades to compensate the victims’ families.
“I am ashamed. As head of state of this country and in the name of the Federal Republic of Germany I ask for forgiveness for insufficient protection of the athletes, for insufficient resolution of this matter,” Steinmeier said
“We also bear responsibility as hosts for not preventing what we should have prevented.”
The Games continued in 1972 after the attacks and the IOC took almost half a century to comply with families requests for an official act of remembrance at a Games.
It finally held a moment of silence and mentioned the Munich victims at last year’s Tokyo summer Olympics opening ceremony.
Ankie Spitzer, whose husband Andre, an Israeli fencing coach, was killed in the attacks, addressed him in her speech. “Please forgive me Andre that it took me so long,” she said.
“Although we are finally reaching our goals after 50 years at the end of the day you are still gone and nothing can change that.
“Everybody is asking me now if I feel closure. They don’t understand that there will never be closure. The hole in my heart will never, never heal,” Spitzer said.
Families had threatened to boycott the event following disagreements over the size of Germany’s compensation offer.
The dispute was resolved after Germany’s government and the Israeli families agreed on Friday on a package worth a total of 28 million euros ($27.77 million).
As flags across all state buildings in the Bavarian capital flew at half-mast, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Steinmeier laid a wreath at the site.
“The decision to take responsibility for the failures surrounding and following the massacre, to allow for an objective and rigorous inquiry, and to compensate the victims’ families is part of that sanctification of the good and triumph over evil,” Herzog said.
The ceremony was attended by International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Thomas Bach and other officials.
-Reuters
Athletes at the Milano Cortina Winter Games have raced through their free condom supply ahead of Valentine’s Day, leaving dispensers empty on Saturday, with more than a week of competition remaining.
According to a report by Reuters, organisers had distributed around 10,000 condoms across the city and mountain accommodation sites, continuing a long-standing Olympic tradition aimed at promoting safe relationships among competitors living in close quarters.
By Saturday, however, supplies had run out — adding Milan to a growing list of Olympic hosts where demand has comfortably exceeded expectations.
“Clearly, this shows Valentine’s Day is in full swing at the village,” International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams told a press conference. “Ten thousand have been used — 2,800 athletes — you can go figure, as they say.”
Adams added with a smile: “It is rule 62 of the Olympic Charter that we have to have a condoms story. Faster, higher, stronger, together.”
Milano Cortina organisers later acknowledged that stocks had been depleted due to “higher-than-anticipated demand,” but assured that additional supplies were already on the way.
“Additional supplies are being delivered and will be distributed across all Villages between today and Monday,” organisers said in a statement. “They will be continuously replenished until the end of the Games to ensure continued availability.”
The unexpected shortage also surprised some athletes.
Mexican figure skater Donovan Carrillo said he had only just heard about the situation. “I just saw that this morning. I was, like, shocked as everyone else,” he said.
Mialitiana Clerc, an alpine skier representing Madagascar, noted that boxes once placed at building entrances were quickly emptied.
“There were a lot of boxes at the entrance of every building where we were staying, and every day, everything had gone from the boxes,” Clerc said. “I already know that a lot of people are using condoms, or giving them to their friends outside of the Olympics, because it’s a kind of gift for them.”
While medals remain the official measure of achievement at the Games, the empty dispensers suggest that the social side of the Olympics is also proceeding at full pace.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday awarded a top state honour to an Olympic skeleton racer who was disqualified from the Winter Games for wearing a helmet commemorating athletes killed in the war with Russia.
Zelenskiy, speaking to Vladyslav Heraskevych on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference, said he had great respect for “all the Olympians who supported you and your position.”
“Medals are important for Ukraine and for you, but it seems to me that the most important thing is who you are,” Zelenskiy said while presenting the racer with the Order of Freedom.
Heraskevych told the president the award was “huge” and that the athletes depicted on the helmet “deserve it even more. Because of their sacrifice, we can compete in the Olympics.”
Heraskevych, 27, was disqualified at the Winter Games in Italy on Thursday when the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation jury ruled that the helmet’s depiction of athletes killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 breached rules on political neutrality.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed his appeal on Friday.
Heraskevych told reporters after the award ceremony that his disqualification was discriminatory as he had not violated the Olympic Charter, a document he said he “really valued.”
“But at the same time, I understand that this scandal has united people around the world about our problem and about the sacrifice of these great athletes, and I believe this goal is much more important than any medal,” he said.
Speaking before the CAS hearing earlier in the day, Heraskevych said his exclusion and rules imposed by the International Olympic Committee were “an instrument of propaganda for Russia. I still receive a lot of threats from the Russian side.”
-Reuters
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Ukraine’s skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych was disqualified from the Milano Cortina Winter Games on Thursday over the use of a helmet depicting Ukrainian athletes killed in the war with Russia, the International Olympic Committee said.
He was informed of his disqualification after a meeting with IOC President Kirsty Coventry early in the morning at the sliding venue.
His team said they would appeal the decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Coventry told reporters she had wanted to meet the athlete face to face in a last-ditch effort to break the impasse.
“I was not meant to be here but I thought it was really important to come here and talk to him face to face,” Coventry told reporters.
“No one, especially me, is disagreeing with the messaging, it’s a powerful message, it’s a message of remembrance, of memory.
“The challenge was to find a solution for the field of play. Sadly we’ve not been able to find that solution” she added, choking up.
“I really wanted to see him race, It’s been an emotional morning.”
The IOC offered him the opportunity to display his “helmet of remembrance” depicting 24 images of dead compatriots before the start and after the end of Thursday’s race at the Games, while also allowing him to wear a black armband while competing.
“I am disqualified from the race. I will not get my Olympic moment,” said Heraskevych.
The skeleton competition starts later on Thursday.
-Reuters
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