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GYMNASTICS JOY FOR JAPANESE STAR While an honourable mention must go to Mikhail Voronin of the Soviet Union for his impressive medal haul of two golds, four silvers and one bronze in the men’s gymnastics competition, the real star of the show was Japan’s Akinori Nakayama. By clinching no fewer than four gold medals – with a silver and a bronze also thrown in for good measure – the man from Nagoya emerged as one of the standout performers of the Games. He would go on to claim a further four medals in Munich four years later, topping the podium again in the rings and team events. The legacy of the 1968 Olympic Games lives on in Mexico City. Several venues specifically built for the Games continue to be operational, including the Palacio de los Deportes, which regularly welcomes world-famous music acts. The country’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup two years later in 1970 (and again in 1986) also ensured that the stadiums used in the Olympic football tournament – three of which opened shortly before the Games – would be able to hold major sporting events for years to come. Through the creation of the Cultural Olympiad, which ran from the start of 1968 until the end of the Games (the first staging of such an event in modern Olympic history), Mexico City also championed the concept of merging the arts and sport, the body and the intellect – a tradition that is still alive today. OVERCOMING ALTITUDE AND ADVERSITY Mexico City’s high altitude added another challenge for endurance athletes. For John Stephen Akhwari, however, the relative scarcity of oxygen proved to be the least of his worries. Suffering a cramp early on in the men’s marathon, the Tanzanian dislocated his right knee in a pile-up halfway through the race. Ignoring advice to withdraw, Akhwari battled through the pain barrier to complete the race long after the other competitors had crossed the finish line, serving a powerful example of what athletes can accomplish through sheer courage and determination. OLYMPIC LEGACY MEMORABLE MOMENTS MEMORABLE MOMENTS “My high school coach said I could probably make the Olympic team. He gave me something to shoot for. Those Olympic Games, that jump, changed my life.” Bob Beamon, US athlete whose 8.9m effort in the men’s long jump smashed the world record by 55cm WHAT THEY SAID OLYMPIC REVIEW 71 OLYMPIC FLASHBACK