Looking At Violence In The Olympics

Added: 11/22/2007

The Olympics is a series of different types of competition with some being individual and some being contact and very physical. For the most part Olympic violence has been something that has been almost non-existent but there has been incidents on the field of play, and off the field, that have grabbed the attention of the world and for all of the wrong reasons. Sometimes the games of goodwill get out of hand.

Everyone has seen or heard of some sort of violence in the Olympic Games and when violence strikes the Olympics it always makes international news. Some of the violence in the Olympic Games borders on ridiculous while other instances of violence in the Olympics can only be classified as terrifying. Fortunately most of the violence in the Olympics does not happen in the field of play even though such sports as ice hockey and boxing are part of the Olympic Games. But there is a huge difference between a violent and jarring body check in an ice hockey game, or a violent jab from a boxer, and a bomb going off in a crowded Olympic celebration. Some violence in the Olympics is part of the competition and through a culture of respect and understanding the athletes know that it is all part of the quest that they came all the way to the Olympics to pursue. But when people start shooting guns at the Olympics, or some other violent act, then that is when violence in the Olympics starts to make front page news with the things that people never want to see happening when they send their best athletes to compete in the ultimate international display of goodwill and sportsmanship.

Probably one of the more bizarre instances of violence in the Olympics happened between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan right before the 1994 Winter Olympics that were to take place Lillehammer, Norway. Nancy Kerrigan was a bronze medalist at the 1992 Albertville, France Winter Olympics but at only 23 years old she had become a favorite to win the gold in 1994. Tonya Harding was a prominent American figure skater as well but she was consistently buried in the media behind Nancy Kerrigan. Harding’s desire to win the gold in Lillehammer was so strong that she called on her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly to take care of Nancy Kerrigan. Gillooly hired a man named Shawn Eckhardt as a security advisor and Eckhardt hired a thug named Shane Stant to take care of Kerrigan. On January 6, 1994, just a month before the Olympics, Stant clubbed Kerrigan in the knee after she got off the ice for a practice session. Kerrigan recovered enough to win the silver medal while Harding failed to win a medal as she broke down into tears on several occasions and her skate became untied during one of her routines.

On July 27, 1996 Eric Robert Rudolph detonated an explosive device with pieces of sharp metal in it in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park killing two people and injuring one hundred and eleven more people. The blast was captured live on film by news crews doing interviews with other celebrities and in the end the bombing was the worst Olympic disaster on US soil.

Of course everyone knows about the worst act of Olympic violence ever which occurred at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany. Palestinian terrorists took eleven Israeli athletes captive and killed two of the athletes while still in the Olympic village. In the end all of the hostages were killed and three of the terrorists survived. Munich stands today as the ultimate in senseless Olympic violence.

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