The first Olympic Games in post-war Germany took place 27 years after the end of World War II. In 1972 Munich hosted the XX Summer Olympics with the slogan "Happy Games" and a shining blue sun in the logo. Unfortunately, the mourning color of terrorism from the Palestinian "Black September" has also been added to the palette of games.
The location of the Summer Olympic Games with the jubilee - twentieth - serial number was determined in 1966 in Rome. After that, a large-scale program of preparation for the sports festival was launched in Munich. Dozens of sports facilities with the latest equipment were built, including a stadium for 80 thousand seats, a cycle track, a swimming pool, a sports complex, etc. In addition to sports facilities, an "Olympic village" was created for 15 thousand athletes, and even a metro appeared in the city by the XX Olympics.
The opening ceremony of the games, attended by almost 7,200 Olympians from 121 countries, took place on August 26, 1972. The very next day, the first two Olympic champions became known, and a total of 195 sets of awards were presented at these games. The undisputed hero of the Olympics was the American Mark Spitz - the swimmer went to the start seven times and each time won a gold medal. Moreover, all heats ended with a new world record. In total, 46 world records and 94 Olympic records were broken in Munich. The athletes of the Soviet Union also took part in this. So Lyudmila Bragina improved the world achievement at a 1.5-kilometer distance among runners three times. Another runner, Valery Borzov, managed to win two gold and one silver medals. In general, the party and the government set the task for the Soviet team to win 50 gold awards and beat the Americans in the medal standings by the 50th anniversary of the USSR. The Olympians were able to solve the set problem, having climbed exactly 50 times to the highest step of the podium, and supplemented this number with 49 more awards of other dignity. The Americans received only five fewer awards, but were significantly behind in the number of gold medals (17 fewer).
On the 11th day of the Olympics, the largest terrorist attack in the history of the Games took place. Five Palestinian terrorists from Black September infiltrated the Olympic village and took nine members of the Israeli delegation hostage, killing two athletes in the process. The terrorists demanded to take them with the hostages to the airport and provide a helicopter, which the FRG authorities complied with. At the airport, an attempt was made to free the hostages, which failed - the terrorists killed the hostages, and only three of them remained alive. Olympic competitions were stopped that day, but then the IOC decided to continue the games.
