Sport: Dampening the Olympic Torch

WE have only the strength of a great ideal," intoned Avery Brundage last week in Munich at the Olympic Stadium memorial service for the slain Israeli athletes. "I am sure the public will agree that we cannot allow a handful of terrorists to destroy this nucleus of international cooperation and good will." Thus, the second week of the XX Olympiad proceeded under a grim penumbra cast not only by the brutal murders, but by sloppy officiating, errant decisions by Brundage's International Olympic Committee—and by the insensitivity of Brundage himself. In his brief speech at the service, the outgoing I.O.C. president tastelessly equated the slayings with what he called the other "savage attack" on the Olympics: the threatened boycott of the Games by Black African nations that had forced the expulsion of Rhodesia. With what some thought was unseemly haste, the competition resumed the same day after the memorial service was concluded.

The multinational gerontocracy of the wealthy sportsmen who run the I.O.C. has never been particularly noted for collective brilliance. As the competitors tried to pick up the shards of the Olympiad, the committee members seemed to outdo themselves in demonstrating their skill at letter-of-the-law Pecksniffepy. Unfortunately for the U.S. team, the brunt of their questionable decisions was borne by American athletes, who were deprived of at least one, and possibly three gold medals.

Minuscule Dosage. The first involved Rick DeMont, 16, a slender distance swimmer from San Rafael, Calif., who had won the 400-meter freestyle by 1/100 sec. over Australia's Brad Cooper. Only minutes before he was to swim in the finals of the 1,500-meter freestyle, DeMont was told that he had been disqualified; an illegal stimulant, ephedrine, had been found in his urine specimen, submitted after the 400. The ephedrine was in prescribed medication that DeMont, an asthmatic, had been taking for years and that he had noted on his Olympic medical form. But neither the Olympic medical committee nor the U.S. coaching staff had warned Rick to discontinue the treatment during the Games (although a U.S. team doctor claimed that he had advised the youngster against taking the medication). Thus, despite a frantic appeal by U.S. coaches, the I.O.C. eliminated Rick from further competition and demanded the return of his gold medal, which he had already taken back to the U.S. DeMont became the best-known Olympian since Jim Thorpe in 1912 to have to return a medal.