Since the opening ceremonies will start tomorrow, I thought I would share with everyone my story from the 1972 games when they were in Munich, Germany. I suspect even our Iowa friends will appreciate reading this narrative since it involves one of their favorites from the past. I've mentioned in several posts that I was actually there, so here is the whole story.
===========================================================================================
Way back when the summer Olympic games were held in Munich Germany, my friend Chris Black and I were doing the backpacking around Europe thing that has always been popular with US college age students. Some of you older guys might remember Chris – he was one of the top ranked guys at 126 in 1972 and was named OW at the EIWA championships when Penn State was still competing in the tournament.
It was in the middle of the afternoon and we were sitting in the popular Hofbrauhaus drinking beer and eating some German dark bread. I mentioned that the gold medal rounds for the freestyle wrestling were that evening and we would be remiss if we didn’t make some kind of effort to see them. Of course, that meant sneaking into the event since we didn’t have any tickets. I figured that if we got caught, all the security guys would do is walk us out again. This was a few days before the infamous terrorist incident. Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing what was being planned for later.
We used the Munich street car system to get to the Olympic park and after a little looking around, figured out where the wrestling event was being held. It was a big complex surrounded by a chain link fence. There were several buildings in the complex, and we weren’t sure which was the right one. We started out by going around to a dark area on the side of the complex and climbed over the fence in a spot where no security was present. At the time, I gave no serious thought to what we were doing other than basically having fun and adventure. It wasn’t until 33 years later when the film Munich was released that I realized the implications of our actions. In the opening scene of the movie, the terrorists are shown climbing over a chain link fence just like we had done. Although we had no bad intentions, we had correctly assessed the total lack of security and entered a restricted area without any incident with the local guards.
It took us a while to figure out which building was holding the wrestling, and we headed towards the rear of the building. We noticed there was an open door on the rear wall where two security guys were sitting. We walked towards the door to check it out and a few seconds later a guy stepped out wearing a USA warmup. We immediately recognized that it was Dan Gable, so we walked over to the door to talk to him. Considering that he had about 45 minutes until he was going against the Russian for the gold medal, he was fairly relaxed. He recognized my friend Chris, and told us he was pretty far ahead according to the black mark scoring system that was in place at the time. Then he said he had to get back inside to get ready so we wished him good luck. Right after he went back into the building we just walked in behind him and the guards didn’t even notice us! So there we were – we had just managed to sneak into the gold medal round for the freestyle wrestling events for that evening!
We found some empty seats in the stands and sat down to watch the upcoming matches. Needless to say, the wrestling that night was top quality. Of course our biggest interest was watching Dan Gable and Wayne Wells who were both wrestling that night. They both won, and their matches are available to watch on YouTube. Gable pretty much dominated the Russian but Wells had a good competitor from West Germany. There was a lot of scoring in their match and Wells finally ended up winning.
On top of that, we watched Ivan Yarygin and Alexander Medved from the Soviet Union win gold for their country the same night. Yarygin pinned his way through the entire Olympic tournament which was pretty amazing. Medved’s match was the last one of the night where he wrestled a guy from Bulgaria and won pretty convincingly. After winning the gold medal, Medved proceeded to take off his shoes and leave them in the center of the mat indicating it was his last competition. I wish there had been some way to grab one of his shoes. That would have been an awesome souvenir.
After the gold medal matches were finished, everyone came down to the gym floor and mingled around. We saw Gable sitting on top of a railing so we went over and offered our congratulations. A little bit later, I saw Medved standing by himself against the back wall of the gym just taking it all in I walked over and shook his hand and also said congratulations. That was a really cool memory for me considering that about 20 years ago, he was voted the outstanding freestyle wrestler of the 20th century.
After that, we left and went to another Munich beer hall to celebrate our good fortune. Unfortunately, we did not have a camera, so we had no record of what we did that evening, but we both knew it had happened and didn’t care if our friends back home didn’t believe us. After seeing how easy it was to get into the events, we decided to hang around in Munich and see what other sports we could catch. The terrorist attack against the Israeli athletes was a few days later, and that put a quick end to our plans.
As I mentioned earlier, I never gave much thought to the political implications of what we did that night until the movie Munich came out in 2005. We were just a couple of young guys having fun bending the rules a little bit and getting away with it. But when I watched the movie Munich, it hit me right in the first few minutes that we had figured out that the security at the games was totally inadequate so that a couple of young guys like us could walk through it with impunity. Of course the consequences were disastrous, and I really wish there was a way those events could have been avoided.
So that’s the story of my Olympic adventure. It’s definitely one of my coolest memories ever.
===========================================================================================
Way back when the summer Olympic games were held in Munich Germany, my friend Chris Black and I were doing the backpacking around Europe thing that has always been popular with US college age students. Some of you older guys might remember Chris – he was one of the top ranked guys at 126 in 1972 and was named OW at the EIWA championships when Penn State was still competing in the tournament.
It was in the middle of the afternoon and we were sitting in the popular Hofbrauhaus drinking beer and eating some German dark bread. I mentioned that the gold medal rounds for the freestyle wrestling were that evening and we would be remiss if we didn’t make some kind of effort to see them. Of course, that meant sneaking into the event since we didn’t have any tickets. I figured that if we got caught, all the security guys would do is walk us out again. This was a few days before the infamous terrorist incident. Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing what was being planned for later.
We used the Munich street car system to get to the Olympic park and after a little looking around, figured out where the wrestling event was being held. It was a big complex surrounded by a chain link fence. There were several buildings in the complex, and we weren’t sure which was the right one. We started out by going around to a dark area on the side of the complex and climbed over the fence in a spot where no security was present. At the time, I gave no serious thought to what we were doing other than basically having fun and adventure. It wasn’t until 33 years later when the film Munich was released that I realized the implications of our actions. In the opening scene of the movie, the terrorists are shown climbing over a chain link fence just like we had done. Although we had no bad intentions, we had correctly assessed the total lack of security and entered a restricted area without any incident with the local guards.
It took us a while to figure out which building was holding the wrestling, and we headed towards the rear of the building. We noticed there was an open door on the rear wall where two security guys were sitting. We walked towards the door to check it out and a few seconds later a guy stepped out wearing a USA warmup. We immediately recognized that it was Dan Gable, so we walked over to the door to talk to him. Considering that he had about 45 minutes until he was going against the Russian for the gold medal, he was fairly relaxed. He recognized my friend Chris, and told us he was pretty far ahead according to the black mark scoring system that was in place at the time. Then he said he had to get back inside to get ready so we wished him good luck. Right after he went back into the building we just walked in behind him and the guards didn’t even notice us! So there we were – we had just managed to sneak into the gold medal round for the freestyle wrestling events for that evening!
We found some empty seats in the stands and sat down to watch the upcoming matches. Needless to say, the wrestling that night was top quality. Of course our biggest interest was watching Dan Gable and Wayne Wells who were both wrestling that night. They both won, and their matches are available to watch on YouTube. Gable pretty much dominated the Russian but Wells had a good competitor from West Germany. There was a lot of scoring in their match and Wells finally ended up winning.
On top of that, we watched Ivan Yarygin and Alexander Medved from the Soviet Union win gold for their country the same night. Yarygin pinned his way through the entire Olympic tournament which was pretty amazing. Medved’s match was the last one of the night where he wrestled a guy from Bulgaria and won pretty convincingly. After winning the gold medal, Medved proceeded to take off his shoes and leave them in the center of the mat indicating it was his last competition. I wish there had been some way to grab one of his shoes. That would have been an awesome souvenir.
After the gold medal matches were finished, everyone came down to the gym floor and mingled around. We saw Gable sitting on top of a railing so we went over and offered our congratulations. A little bit later, I saw Medved standing by himself against the back wall of the gym just taking it all in I walked over and shook his hand and also said congratulations. That was a really cool memory for me considering that about 20 years ago, he was voted the outstanding freestyle wrestler of the 20th century.
After that, we left and went to another Munich beer hall to celebrate our good fortune. Unfortunately, we did not have a camera, so we had no record of what we did that evening, but we both knew it had happened and didn’t care if our friends back home didn’t believe us. After seeing how easy it was to get into the events, we decided to hang around in Munich and see what other sports we could catch. The terrorist attack against the Israeli athletes was a few days later, and that put a quick end to our plans.
As I mentioned earlier, I never gave much thought to the political implications of what we did that night until the movie Munich came out in 2005. We were just a couple of young guys having fun bending the rules a little bit and getting away with it. But when I watched the movie Munich, it hit me right in the first few minutes that we had figured out that the security at the games was totally inadequate so that a couple of young guys like us could walk through it with impunity. Of course the consequences were disastrous, and I really wish there was a way those events could have been avoided.
So that’s the story of my Olympic adventure. It’s definitely one of my coolest memories ever.
