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| Residents of Budapest wave Hungarian flags atop a Soviet army tank against the intervention of Red Army on November 12, 1956 |
KEY FACTS
Dates: Nov. 22 – Dec. 8
Other candidate cities: Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Detroit, Mexico City, Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Montreal, San Francisco
Participants: 3,314 (376 women)
Participating nations: 67
Disciplines: 16
Events: 145
Medals given out: 451
IOC president: Avery Brundage (US)
Games declared open by: Prince Philip, representing Queen Elizabeth II
Last relay bearer of the Olympic flame: Ron Clarke (athletics, Australia)
Flame lit by: Ron Clarke (athletics, Australia)
Olympic oath read by: John Landy (athletics, Australia)
Journalists: 960
STOCKHOLM
Equestrian sports
Dates: 10 - 17 June
Candidate cities: Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires
Participants: 158 (13 women)
Participating Nations: 29
Discipline: 1
Events: 6
Medals: 18
Opening: Queen Elizabeth II and Gustav VI, King of Sweden
Last torch runner: Hans Wikne (Sweden, equestrian sports)
Flame lit by: Hans Wikne (Sweden, equestrian sports)
Olympic oath read by: Henri Saint-Cyr (Sweden, equestrian sports)
Journalists: 501
ANECDOTES
The Black Spider
The Soviet Union won the football tournament riding the talents of their gifted goalkeeper Lev Yashin a man who went on to become a legend in the game and was known as the 'Black Spider'.
Heatwave
For the opening ceremony the sun was blazing in Melbourne and 225 people collapsed, among them the leader of the American delegation.
Hungarian water-polo player Ervin Zador goes out of the swimming pool with the face cover of blood after having been wounded during a clash with USSR team 06 December 1956 during the semi-final of the Melbourne Olympics water-polo event. In final, Hungary won the gold in front of Yugoslaviaa (silver) and USSR (bronze).
Fighting
Hungary beat the Soviet Union 4-0 in a bitterly contested game of water-polo. The referee eventually stopped the clash after several incidents in which players exchanged blows. The public largely supported the Hungarians, whose homeland had just been invaded by the Soviet military.
Hungary
Two notable Hungarian champions were absent from the Games - the imprisoned swimmer Geza Kadas, and the decathete Hegedus, who had been killed on the barricades during the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The Australian public cheered wildly for the Hungarian delegation during the opening ceremony while they were reserved in receiving the Americans who had refused to intervene in the dispute.
EXPLOIT
The women’s individual gymnastics event, which had been inaugurated only four years earlier, produced one of the biggest and most talked-about rivalries ever seen in the gymnastics arena. It was a battle between two countries whose diplomatic relations were not in the healthiest of conditions, given the Soviet Union’s recent invasion of Budapest, and one between young and old as 35-year-old Agnes Keleti from Hungary attempted to overcome the 1952 Soviet domination of the women’s all-around event. Standing in her way was the combined epitomy of Soviet youth and talent in the shape of 21-year-old Larissa Latynina. Although both gymnasts had been more-or-less tied throughout the contest, like her compatriot Maria Horokhovska had in 1952, it was Latynina who eventually triumphed.
SUMMERY
The Melbourne Games of 1956 were the scene of the most violently contested face-off in Olympic history when the water-polo semi-final pitched Hungary against the Soviet Union, whose tanks had rolled into Budapest just a few weeks previously.
Heavy with the mourning for the loss of their hope for liberty and thousands of dead compatriots, the Hungarians took to the pool with rage burning in their hearts.
The match of course turned into an outright fight and had to be stopped to prevent a literal bloodbath with the pool already taking on a pink hue.
Hungary were leading 4-0 and went on to win gold.
Symbolic as this defeat was for the Soviet team they went on — often accompanied by vicious booing and howls of derision — to win 37 gold medals.
In particular, they excelled in the gymnastics competition where they won 11 gold, four from their all-time great Larissa Latynina (overall, team, horse and floor).
She eventually went down in Olympic history with a total of nine gold medals and along with Paavo Nurmi, Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis holds the record for the most Olympic titles.
The USSR also won six wrestling titles, three in weightlifting and three in shooting.
Hosts Australians won 35 medals themselves more than tripling their haul from Helsinki four years earlier.
Their sprinter Betty Cuthbert won triple gold in the classic sprint events but it was the swimmers with eight gold that really impressed.
For various reasons seven nations boycotted the Melbourne Olympics but none of them because Australia was so far away.
China stayed away because of Taiwan, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon to protest against Israel and The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland in protest against the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
