Print | Send to friend | Email update

Apr 24, 2008

The killing of several Israeli athletes and the holding of the rest of them as hostages meant the excitement all came crashing down.

My first reaction was that this would be the end of the modern Olympic movement as we had come to know it. I thought the rest of the competition would be suspended and we would all be sent home.

Yet in a bizarre way, and looking back all these years later, and very selfishly I admit, the terrorism thing in Munich was very good for my career.

It was like this. Back home at work in New Zealand, there was then a clear division between news reporters and sports reporters.

We were housed separate departments and never the twain met. It was considered that sports reporters only commentated on sports events.

But out of the Munich horror I phoned some news reports back home which proved to the powers that be that in times of crisis sports reporters could cross the line.

That is what happened to me.

A horror night

Of course I can vividly hark back to the first horror night.

I had a friend in the New Zealand track and field team. He was an old rugby rep from Wellington, Laurie D'Arcy.

He ran that day in the 100 metres sprint and after his 10.77 seconds heat he failed to qualify and his Games were over.

Laurie rang me in the studio and asked, "What was I doing later, any chance of coming over for a drink?"

Being a bullet-proof lad in those days I said, "Sure, come over to the studio at midnight. That's when I finish work."

So Laurie did. We went to the infamous Press bar where I was by then pretty much a regular.

We settled down for a few beers. Laurie was downcast of course.

But I remember we worked hard at cheering him up and at the next table things got a bit raucous.

Pass the pint, please

Some off-duty German policemen challenged us to a drinking relay race, you know, the kind which blokes of a certain age think of as being clever.

From my increasingly hazy memory I think we Kiwis were holding our own in the races.

It was New Zealand versus the Germans. Suddenly the bar doors burst open and some different guards came in shouting with revolvers drawn.

I wondered what the noise was all about. Our relay-drinking mates translated that apparently the guards reckoned some shots had been fired in the Olympic village.

They suggested we should all get away from the windows. We did their bidding.

But after the guards had gone the drinking relays resumed.

Only later did we realise that the guards were actually talking about the first gunshots of the Arab Terrorist group in their deadly attack on the Israeli team's quarters.

In the bar we thought maybe it was just pissed rifle shooters, like we were, also out on the tiles.

In the end I walked (make that staggered!) down to the gate into the Olympic Village where Laurie was heading back to the New Zealand team's quarters.

As it was about 4am the entry gate there was locked. There was no one about.

So in the spirit of a million Kiwi student parties I cupped my hands and gave the athletic Laurie a leg heave over the high village fence.

There was no security and he landed with a thump on the other side and we laughed like hell as he disappeared down Connolly Strasse towards the New Zealand team rooms.

Little did we know that their next door neighbours, the Israeli team, had already had their quarters invaded and several men were dead.

Evil eyes

Evil eyes must have watched the cheerful D'Arcy wandering by heading for his bed.

I also made it home to my place and crashed off to a blissful sleep.

The terrorists waited until the morning light to tell the world of the evil they had accomplished and the infamous demands they wanted next.

The Olympics were suddenly in tatters.

The next thing I was being shaken awake by my NZBC colleague Rob Crabtree who informed me of the shambles and distress the Games were now in.

Through my hangover I listened in horror as the realisation hit me of how close I had been to the Arab shootings.

I hoped D'Arcy had made it home OK.

All that day the world waited as the terrorists were in long negotiations with local police and Olympic authorities.

Games postponed

The incident became the centre of world attention and the Olympics were suspended.

I sat in our studio glumly watching as the TV networks of the British BBC, ABC of America, as well as local German ZDF, stayed on air all day and into the night, most of the time with the commentators just talking over a single camera shot zeroed in on a narrow view of the Israeli quarters.

At last there were signs of a break in the give and take between the terrorists and the police.

The remaining Israeli athletes were seen being hustled into buses.

This was chilling to watch, especially when the TV coverage showed helicopters rising from behind nearby buildings.

We rushed to the studio windows and watched as the hostages and athletes were whisked away - we were told towards the local airport.

The next news to come through was that a successful attack had been made on the terrorists and that they were all dead.

Terrible mistake

That first airport report said that the remaining Israeli athletes had been saved.

At the studio my boss, the late Lance Cross filed his final news report and went home.

As a member of the International Olympic Committee he was staying in a downtown hotel.

Like the rest of us Mr Cross had had a long day.

But I wasn't interested in going back to my humble abode - I was too stunned.

I sat there in our studio, alone with the devastation of the day and the fact that the cancellation of the Olympic Games would surely be confirmed tomorrow morning.

Perhaps forever. One couldn't have reasonably expected the IOC to continue after several competitors had been murdered.

My world had collapsed.

Horrible reality

I gazed at the TV screens and only came out of my vacant trance when suddenly brand new stories flashed from Munich's Furstenfeldbrook Airport.

There was a dramatic change. We were next informed that in fact all of the remaining hostages had not been saved at all.

Instead they had been blown to bits as well in the police crossfire.

This was a mournful addition to the horror of the previous 24 hours of world news and it needed to be told to the folks back home.

As Mr Cross had gone I took it upon myself to immediately book a phone call back to our Wellington radio network newsroom.

These were days well in advance of cellphones and texting.

Big breakthrough

The staff in New Zealand accepted my call with scepticism.

Their last contact from Munich had come from a triumphant Lance Cross telling them of a confirmation that all of the remaining athletes had been saved.

Now here was a 26 year-old upstart going against what their authoritative contact, from deep inside the IOC, had told them.

Somehow someone in the newsroom decided to believe the trembling boy at the end of the line.

My hurried reports were recorded and they made the various afternoon national radio news.

Apparently I was instantly transformed from a jock sports reporter into a person with some kind of ability as a hard news hound.

That reputation I was not to really appreciate till I reached home.

The next morning in Munich Lance Cross was not happy that I had "scooped" him. Still, them's the breaks, right?

The Games must go on

So the Games went on, after a suitably sombre memorial service.

I fully supported the decision though many did not. For me I was again consumed with my own ambitions.

That might sound selfish, but I resumed my first experience of the marvellous Olympic spirit and it has never left me since.

At those Olympics New Zealand won the men's rowing eights event.

I wasn't actually there to actually see the race at the rowing course and I listened across the city from the swimming pool.

I was so moved by the experience of that victory and the emotion of seeing grown Kiwi men sobbing on the victory dais, my wife and I named our first-born child, "Rowan," when she arrived in this world a month after getting home.

Well, actually that is a bit of a family myth.

My wife Anne and I had already decided on the name, boy or girl, months before the Olympics of that year.

But hey, we newshounds don't let the facts spoil a good story, right?

Like Father, like Daughter

With that in mind let me fast forward to happier times; what a thrill it was for me when our Rowan, as an adult, took up the sport of rowing and she won two New Zealand senior titles.

Not only that, she later worked in Lausanne, Switzerland for the World Rowing body, FISA.

Furthermore, she reported the rowing competitions at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and was right there when Rob Waddell won his gold medal in the men's single sculls.

Now in 2008 she is a senior reporter for National Radio in Auckland.

Did that interest in broadcasting come from the excitement of travelling to the Olympic Games and the excited newsgathering stories I conveyed to her and the rest of my family?

I often wonder.

I'll have more Olympic memories, next from Montreal, right here soon.