1976 OLYMPIC GAMES

The 1976 Olympic Games: A Financial Disaster

            The 1976 Olympic games were held on July 17-August 1, 1976 in 1976.  July 17th was the opening ceremony of the 1976 summer olynmpic games.  There were over 73,000 who were present in the stadium and approximately a half billion who watched on television.  The ceremeony was the opening of the XX1 olympiad.  It was the first olympic games held in Canada. The games officially began with the arrival of Queen Elizabeth II.  The olympic flag was carried by eight men and hoisted by four women who represented the two territories and ten provinces of Canada.  The arrival of the olympic flame travelled by air from Athens to Ottawa not by plane.  Ionized particles of the flame were detected by a sensor which then turned them into impulses. The impulses was subsequently transmitted by sattellite to Ottawa where they were activated by a laser beam.  It then recreated it to its original hape, the olympic flame.
 
            No African athletes were allowed to particiapte in the olympics, however they did participate in a boycot.  The boycot was organized by Tanzania including 22 countries.  This was in reaction to olympics committee refusal to ban New Zealand from the games.  New Zealand's rugby team toured South Africa.  South Africa was a country that was excluded from special events internationally because of implemetation of the apartheid policy.

  The 1976 Olympic games were the debut for womens events in basketball, team handball and rowing.  For the first time hockey was played on artificial ptich. 
         14 year old gymnist Nadia Comanecia of Romania became the star of the games.  She beame famous for her uneven bar performance when she was awarded a first-ever perfect score of 10.

Montreal faced debts for 30 years after the games had finished.  The olympics became a financial disaster for Montreal.  It became evident that work was so far behind schedule when the tower was still not built weeks before the start of the olympic games.  The Quebec government took over the construction and debt racked up to a billion dollars.  The Quebec government mandated the city to pay in full.  The Olympic stadium was named the Big O in reference to the doughnut shaped rooftop and its name.  It is referred to as the enourmous cost of the stadium and the 1976 olympics as a whole.  Cost were not paid in full until 2006.

www.olympic.org/montreal-1976-summer-olympics
http://www.la84foundation.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1976/ore105/ore105ze.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2pBeV4TYd4
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1091387/index.htm