The Moment

In a Games bulging with great moments (more of them below), one perhaps surprisingly stands tall above all. And that’s because it was the first time politics patently entered the post-war Olympics and, in doing so, truly resonated around the world. It happened when the Men’s 200m medalists took to the podium – American Tommie Smith (gold), Australian Peter Norman (silver) and American John Carlos (bronze). As the US national anthem the Star Spangled Banner played, both Smith and Carlos, who were already wearing civil rights badges (as was Norman) and black socks without trainers, raised their black glove-clad fists and performed the ‘Black Power’ salute, which at the time wasn’t just associated with support for improved civil rights for African-Americans but with the militant Black Panther Party.

The moment proved a sensation; unsurprisingly surely, as it occurred in a year that was itself a particularly politically highly charged one of the politically highly charged 1960s. In a controversial move, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) felt the act had demeaned the Games and immediately banned Smith and Carlos from the Olympics for life, while Norman’s support of them saw him left off his nation’s team at the next Games. Many at the time, though, and surely the majority today look on Smith and Carlos for bravely – and smartly – using such a global forum to make a stand on an issue they believed in so strongly, as did so many others.