When Abebe Bikila returned to Ethiopia after winning the men’s marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympics, breaking the world record in the process, he was feted as a hero of the new African dawn.
Bikila’s success not only captured the Ethiopian imagination, it captured the African imagination and that of the world. We forget that the only pan-African heroes post-independence were politicians, men who wore leopard-skin hats, kept the military close and shouted slogans into microphones.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, there were no pan-African cultural, musical or sporting heroes. Bikila, a shepherd from the north, broke the mould.
Bikila was triply unknown: unknown as an athlete, unknown as an Ethiopian and unknown as an African. In the post-Second World War period, African nations had only recently become independent. And only recently had they started participating in the Olympics.
Such heroism was compounded four years later when, at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Bikila defended his gold medal successfully, winning gold and again breaking the world marathon record.
In Rome Bikila ran barefoot. According to Tim Judah, an English journalist who wrote a book about Bikila 15 years ago, Bikila had run in shoes in a gentle pre-marathon training run in Italy. This was partly because the Ethiopians were sensitive to the judgement of athletes from other nations, who the Ethiopians believed thought them too poor and backward to afford shoes.
So, perhaps against their better judgement, they ran in shoes. These caused blisters. It was back to square one. And square one meant no shoes, although no shoes continued to cause embarrassment, so much so that Bikila and the other Ethiopian athlete running in the marathon, Abebe Wakjira, spent as long as they dared skulking in a tent close to the start where none of the other athletes could see them.
Some fellow athletes did see them. The Moroccan marathoner, Rhadi Ben Abdesselem, was fascinated. Was the Ethiopian really going to run along the Appian Way, along Rome’s famed cobbled streets, in bare feet? Was he being serious?
After seeing Bikila’s feet, this is what the Moroccan said: “The soles of his feet were as thick and black as coal. I remember that I wanted to touch his feet, the hard skin of which resembled the tyres of big military trucks. I was sure that he would feel nothing but, on the contrary, this hard skin was very sensitive.”
Like Bikila, Abdesselem was a shepherd. Like him, he was from the high country, in the Moroccan’s case, the Rif mountains, great country in which to earn your stripes as an ultra-distance athlete. If the Moroccan was intrigued by the Ethiopian, the Ethiopian was confused by the Moroccan.
This was because the Moroccan in the marathon was racing in the number he’d raced in in the 10 000-meter event. As the marathon field in the 1960 men’s Olympic marathon spread out, the Ethiopian and the Moroccan found themselves in front.
Except that Bikila didn’t know which Moroccan this guy was. It clearly was the Moroccan athlete he’d been told about. It was someone else. He’d better be careful.
As it happened, with about a mile in the marathon to go, Bikila made a surge. Abdesselem, the athlete with the wrong number, couldn’t keep up, and found himself in the wrong place. Africa had her first gold medal at the Olympic Games.
The Italian doctor who examined Bikila after the race as he took his pulse summed things up perfectly, simply saying, “fantastico”.
Four years later, fifteen days before the small Ethiopian team were due to depart for Tokyo for the 1964 Games, Bikila came down with appendicitis. His appendix was successfully removed by a German doctor who warned that he needed to be cautious after the operation. He could do gym work and walk. Even light training was forbidden.
The Ethiopian team arrived in Japan three weeks before the official start of the 1964 Olympics. Bikila hadn’t trained at the intensity he was used to for weeks. It was of little consequence. Running in Puma shoes rather than barefoot this time, Bikila defended his title, breaking the world marathon record in the process.
As part of the post-gold medal festivities back home, he was ferried around the streets of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on the back of a truck. Upon the truck, a makeshift globe lettered with Amharic slogans. Bikila stood on a platform inside the man-sized globe, waving to fans and well-wishers when his arms weren’t raised, a garland of flowers around his neck.
Literally and figuratively, he was on top of the world, looking down upon mere athletics mortals like a long-distance king. Africa had arrived. World distance running would never be the same again.
The Emperor, Haile Selassie, had no alternative but to shower him with gifts. He was given a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle and a home for him and his family, such items befitting his status as a member of the Emperor’s prestigious Imperial Guard.
Athletes run alone but they are nurtured by the love of others. In Bikila’s case, as a young man he was spotted by a Swede called Onni Niskanen who saw him in 1956 and sensed strong but not outrageous athletic ability.
Niskanen arrived in Ethiopia in 1946, just after the Second World War, part of a Swedish delegation tasked with training the cadets in Emperor Selassie’s imperial Guard.
As a younger man the Swede had some running ability. And he had some talent-spotting ability. He saw that Ethiopians boys ran everywhere.
He also saw that the foundation of one of their indigenous sports – ganna – a form of long-distance hockey, required them to run between villages to score goals. Often the two villages were several kilometers apart. When Ethiopian boys played football, he noticed, they strapped up their ankles and played barefoot.
Niskanen was ambitious and pathologically hard-working. He attended the 1948 London Olympics and the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as an official observer on behalf of Selassie’s government, preparing the ground for Ethiopia to make her official Olympic debut.
Ethiopia duly qualified for her first Olympics – at Melbourne in 1956. No-one noticed them come, and no-one noticed them go. Niskanen, a tireless organizer, with roles in the Swedish Red Cross and the Boy Scouts and their operations in Ethiopia, realised there was work to be done if anyone from Ethiopia was to be remembered at the next Olympics in Rome.
He took Bikila and others with him to Sweden, where they trained and dreamt of the future. Born in 1910, Niskanen was 22 years older than Bikila, born in 1932. Their relationship appears to have been firm, paternal, sometimes fun-loving. It was also strangely intimate because the men spent so much time together in close physical proximity.
The Niskanen family have put a blog on the internet, detailing the Ethiopia years. Photographs on it show Bikila, lying on his back, with his hands behind his head, having his feet massaged by the cheery Swede. As far as I know, the story of the relationship between the men is yet to be told.
Not all African Olympic stories have been as dramatically and symbolically rich as Bikila’s. Take the story of the men’s 1500-meters at Munich, eight years after Bikila won the second of his two Olympic golds in Tokyo.
There were seven heats prior to the semi-finals in the men’s 1500 meters at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Each heat contained 10 athletes, so 70 athletes in all participated.
Of those 70, 21 runners were from Africa, over 30% of the field. They came from all over the continent, but mainly from the east and north-east. There was a Sudanese athlete. And athletes from Uganda and Zambia.
An athlete from Malawi – Henry Nkopeka – participated in the heats, as did Edouard Rasoanaivo, who ran in the unfamiliar colours of Madagascar.
One of the 21 African athletes in the heats was Filbert Bayi, from Tanzania, as unknown as Bikela had been in Rome. Bayi had an off day, finishing sixth in heat two, meaning he didn’t qualify for the semi-finals, so he remained an unknown for the time being.
He might have had a plausible excuse. Or, if not an excuse, an explanation – he was only 19 – and not in the habit, as a young man from rural Tanzania, of popping in to Munich for a spot of retail therapy.
Bayi’s time in coming sixth in heat two of the first round of the men’s 1500 meters in Munich was 3:45.4 seconds, the athletic equivalent of “close but no cigar.”
At the end of the heats, when the 70 had been whittled down to 10 finalists, gold was taken by Finland’s Pekka Vasala in 3:36.3, with Kenya’s Kip Keino clocking 3:38.8 to grab silver. Rod Dixon, the fine New Zealand athlete won bronze in a time of 3:37.5.
But the Bayi story doesn’t end there. Just over 18 months later at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, with Bayi putting Munich well and truly behind him, he won one of the great 1500-meter races of all time.
Bayi hared out front and stayed there, smashing the American, Jim Ryun’s 1500-meter world record from 1967 in Los Angeles nearly a second. In second was New Zealand’s John Walker, who came perilously close to reaching Bayi around the final bend before Bayi sprinted down the final straight to win gold.
Bayi’s aggressive approach and Walker’s willingness to chase him captured the imagination of not only those who knew their stop-watch from their wrist watch. It also captivated legions of ordinary Joes and Josephines who knew a tight race when they saw one.
The stands were packed in Christchurch, and not only because of the talent of the New Zealander’s own athletes. They sensed the welling of epic drama. Bayi and Walker at the time were two of the most captivatingly sexy athletes in the world.
The next big stage Bayi and Walker had was the 1976 Montreal Olympics. It was an opportunity for Bayi to put Munich behind him, to finally prove beyond all doubt what he had proven in breaking Ryun’s world record in Christchurch. Walker himself was bullish. Folks should not assume that he was simply content to be second by a fraction of a second. It was all set. Ready, steady, go.
Elsewhere in the sporting world, however, there were rumblings. The All Blacks were scheduled to tour South Africa in 1976. Some countries – mainly but not exclusively in Africa – believed that by touring South Africa, the Kiwis were tacitly condoning apartheid.
They took a position. They said that if New Zealand finally did tour South Africa to play four Test matches in the Republic, they would boycott the next Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee, they said, needed to take an anti-New Zealand stand and condemn her for allowing her rugby players to tour South Africa. It was ridiculous they all looked the other way.
Having been sworn in shortly before Christmas in 1975, the New Zealand prime minister at the time was Robert “Bob” Muldoon. Bob was a barnstorming, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of bloke. An accountant by training, the ledger of life was a straightforward one for Bob. You were either in his column or the other column, either in debit or credit. Morality, finally, was easy to reconcile.
As a shrewd populist with a strong rural constituency, some of who were playfully referred to as “Rob’s Mob”, Muldoon knew that his political reputation would be damaged if the tour failed to go ahead. Rugby was big game on the farms and paddocks of the two New Zealand islands, the biggest game in town.
Street-fighter that he was, Bob decided to call the boycotters’ bluff. Having made their threats, they couldn’t now back down without losing face.
Twenty-five African nations, many of them countries who had started to participate in the Olympics only in the post-Second World War period, boycotted the 1976 games. These included African heavyweights Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Algeria, and a clutch of others, including Sri Lanka, Libya and Iraq.
Tanzania also boycotted, which meant that Bayi, the world record holder in the men’s 1500 meters, wouldn’t be running at Montreal. And he wouldn’t be running against Walker of New Zealand, against whom he had run in such scintillating fashion in Christchurch in 1974.
The boycott turned out to be an exceptionally messy affair. It is difficult to establish with complete certainty, but many of those who boycotted the Games already had teams in Canada when the boycott finally took effect. The Egyptians, for instance, arrived in Montreal but didn’t participate in the march-past. A couple of days in, they pulled out. And they were not alone.
Athletes from elsewhere in Africa also had to undergo the heart-shredding disappointment of being in the Olympic village only to be told they couldn’t unpack their bags but needed to head back from whence they had come. They would have departed in misery and even anger.
Bayi wasn’t the only high-profile African athlete affected. John Akii-Bua, the Ugandan world record-holder in the men’s 400-meters hurdles, was also unable to compete in Montreal. His federation had joined other African countries in the boycott and so Akii-Bua was unable to defend the crown he’d won in the men’s 400-meter hurdles in Munich, breaking the world record in the process.
There would be a new gold medal winner in the event in Montreal.
It’s easy – and possibly wrong – to condemn the non-alligned nations’ boycott of the 1976 Summer Games. It might have been an act of collective hubris, true. But it was also an act of solidarity with the oppressed inside of South Africa, easier for Africans to see because they, too, had recently experienced colonial oppression.
As well as being messy, such things are never straight-forward or simple. Some nations you might have expected to be sympathetic to the idea of boycott, didn’t appear to be. Take India. Almost single-handedly India was instrumental in having South Africa expelled from the IOC, making the 1964 Games South Africa’s last for so many years.
Come 1976, however, and she chose – for whatever reason – not join the boycotters when previous behaviour might have suggested she would have. At any rate, India’s Games was a disappointing one. They didn’t feature at all on the medals table.
The Games was a hefty disappointment for the Canadians themselves. The boycott precipitated cancellations and ticket re-funds. The confusion of the recently-arrived having to quickly-depart was considerable.
Like India, Canada didn’t win a medal, although in Canada’s case, their no-show was worse – they were hosting the damn thing. Clearly home ground advantage didn’t count.
Not only did Canada not get a medal for not getting a medal, they didn’t get a medal for the financial drain on the public purse. Hosting, for them, was a financial disaster. And it was a disaster long after the circus tent had packed up and moved on to Moscow and Los Angeles.
The pathos of Bayi not running against Walker in what many predicted would be the perfect match-up in the 1500-meter final in Montreal was deepened for those who realised that Tanzania’s Games history was at this point a short one. Her first Olympics was in 1964 in Tokyo.
Up until this day, Tanzania has never won an Olympic gold medal, her best being two silvers. Imagine if Bayi had repeated his race in Christchurch against Walker to capture Tanzania’s first Olympic gold in Montreal?
In the case of Uganda – Akii-Bua’s home – her Olympic history is slightly longer, Uganda having participated in her first Olympics at Melbourne in 1956.
Both Tanzania and Uganda stand as representative for African countries as a whole in the sense that Olympic participation for African countries – with the exception of South Africa – is an almost entirely post-Second World War affair.
At the 1948 Games in London, for example, only two African nations – Egypt and South Africa – were amongst the 59 Games participants. In truth, it was a strange roster, as nations struggled to normalize and send teams after the end of the war. Afghanistan sent a team to London, as did Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Monaco. Israel did not.
By 1952, the number of participating countries had jumped to 69, and the number of African competitors to four: Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria and the Gold Coast. In the next Olympics in Melbourne, there were 67 participating nations, including five from Africa: Liberia making her debut alongside Ethiopia.
The real explosion in African participation took place in the first two Olympiads of the 1960s: the Rome Olympics of 1960 and the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. Of the 83 participating countries in 1960, 10 were African. This number had climbed to 20 four years later, with Africa’s medals traditionally being won in the ring and on the track. In 1960, Ghana’s Clement “Ike” Quartey won Ghana’s first-ever Olympic medal in the light-welterweight boxing division
The Bikila and Bayi stories are not the only great African Olympic yarns, although, within the Olympic context, Bayi’s is more of an anti-yarn. Take that of the Zimbabwe women’s hockey side, for example, who decided to take part in the Moscow Olympics in 1980 at short notice, because of widespread Western boycotts protesting at the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Their menfolk did not, sniffing that because the top European men’s hockey teams were boycotting the event as a result of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, participation in Moscow was beneath them.
The Zimbabwean women’s team disagreed. They were up for the adventure. They first flew to Lusaka, in the back of a spluttering Zimbabwe Air Force Dakota, where they were picked up by an Aeroflot jet and whisked away to Moscow.
Once they landed, they were impressed with what they found, although the crack American journalist, George Plimpton, wrote in Harper’s magazine in 1980 that the streets of Moscow were removed of undesirables and the shops were stocked with food ordinary Muscovites couldn’t buy.
Zimbabwe had only just become Zimbabwe when her women hockey players flew to Moscow. They were invited because of the widespread boycotts of the West but decided not to stand on ceremony and participate anyway – despite the reduced field.
They arrived in Moscow two weeks before the start of the Games – an inspired decision. First, it allowed them to play several friendlies, one against India, which the Zimbabweans lost.
Second, it allowed them to get the feel of Astro-turf, which they were unused-to, because they still played on grass. In the context of their unfolding adventure, the two little things proved to be vital.
In the event, the field was small, with only five other competing teams, including the hosts. The Zimbabweans won their opening fixtures against Poland and the USSR. Two draws against the fancied Indians and Czechoslovakia followed.
Going into their final match against Austria and the Zimbabwean women were unbeaten. At this point the permutations were weird: if they beat Austria, they would win the gold medal; if they drew with Austria, they would win bronze, and if they lost they would get nothing and go back to Harare having eaten too much crab and caviar, both of which were freely available in the Olympic Village canteens.
In the event they won their final game against Austria 4-1 to take gold, Zimbabwe’s only medal of the games. What had started out sixth months before, with Jimmy Carter considering grain sanctions against the USSR, found its own momentum and developed into a 66-nation strong boycott. Talk about serendipity.
It was a boycott which gave Zimbabwe’s women hockey players, all of them amateurs, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they took it. Unlike the Zimbabwean men, who didn’t. Those men, the story is told, sulked afterwards for a very, very long time. And then they sulked again.
