5 times world politics cast a shadow on the Olympic Games

1960 Olympic Games, Rome

In an Olympics marked by apartheid, Abebe Bikila ran barefoot, and became the first black African Olympic champion

Sports were segregated in South Africa, then in the throes of apartheid. Athletes were racially segregated, with separate rules and governing bodies for athletes of colour. South Africa’s ‘official’Olympic association only saw white athletes affiliated to it, and although there had been serious complaints through the 1940s and 1950s, the IOC said it would not take any action because it wished to “keep politics and sport separate.”

Eastern Bloc countries had begun protesting this in the 1950s, a movement spurred on by the beginning of the decolonization of Africa (although South Africa would not itself be decolonized until much later).

The racist regime saw South Africa disallowed from Olympic participation, a ban that would remain for three decades afterwards. That ban would finally be lifted in 1992, when South Africa’s Olympic association agreed that it could not seek readmission to the IOC until apartheid was abolished.

That same year, track and field legend Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the marathon – running barefooted – to become the first black African Olympic champion in history.

Former polio patient Wilma Rudolph won three gold medals that year in track and field and became the ‘fastest woman in the world,’ while Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, won the light-heavyweight boxing medal.