Hockey, Men

The Munich Games saw a break in the South Asian hockey hegemony that had lasted since 1928. Host nation West Germany was to take the gold in a controversial final against Pakistan. The two teams had already met in the preliminary round, with the Germans beating the winners of the inaugural World Championships (held in 1971). Determined to retain their Olympic title, the Pakistani locked down the match. After thirty minutes, they appeared to take the lead, but their goal was disallowed for offside, which was heavily disputed by Pakistan. With only ten minutes on the clock, a penalty corner was awarded to West Germany after a hard foul. Germany’s Peter Trump lost his cool when some of his opponents tried to prevent him from taking the corner. This resulted in Trump being sent off for five minutes. When the shot was finally taken, it was perfectly pushed behind goalie Salim Sherwani by Michael Krause.

Now trailing with few minutes left, the Pakistani players and supporters started to misbehave. The match had to be stopped twice because of onlookers on the pitch, and the players kept on complaining to the referee, even after the final whistle. At the victory ceremony, the Pakistani handled their silver medals with contempt, and refused to face the West German flag when it was raised in honour of the victors. Furthermore, they threatened the doctor that wanted to perform doping tests. This prompted the IOC to exclude all players from the Olympics and ban all eleven players from ever competing in the Olympics. This decision was perceived as harsh in Pakistan, as the US basketball team had refused to accept their silver medals after their controversial final. They had not been banned, although two American 400 meter runners (Matthews and Collett) had been. After a formal apology by the Pakistan Hockey Federation, bans for all but three players were dropped, and eventually all players were cleared in time to compete in Montreal.