Seoul music

Magic of the Games

The countdown to the Beijing Olympics revives memories of the 1988 Seoul Games for our cycling correspondent

Martin Ayres

FIFTEEN hours out from Heathrow and the cabin of our Korean Airlines Jumbo was like a slum. Blankets, pillows and newspapers littered the floor and the wrestlers and weight-lifters were prowling the aisles like caged tigers. Seoul, host city of the 1988 Olympic Games, was still five hours distant and the highly-tuned athletes were getting stir crazy.
Finally we landed in the South Korean capital and boarded a bus for the Olympic village. En route we passed the main stadium, which was ablaze with light. A rehearsal of the opening ceremony was in progress; this was more like it, the Games atmosphere was starting to kick in. My mood improved even more when I checked into the the press village. For the next two weeks I would be living in a pleasant apartment that would a house a local family once the Games had departed.
Seoul was only the second Asian city to host the Games, following Tokyo ’64. Hopes were high that the crises that had blighted recent Olympics would not recur. Still fresh in the memory were the terrorist atrocities that left 11 Israeli athletes and coaches dead at Munich in 1972, followed by the American boycott of Moscow in ’80 and the Soviets’ tit-for-tat boycott of Los Angeles four years later.
At Seoul, terrorism was perceived to be the main threat. Security was tight, with body and bag searches at all the venues. This time the politicians didn’t spoil the party. Instead, another threat to the Games emerged from within the ranks of the athletes themselves as doping became a major issue.
All this was in the future as I settled into my trackside seat to watch the opening ceremony. Seoul, a city ravaged by war only 35 years earlier, put on a great show. There was a fly-past, folk dancers and the constant throb of huge Korean drums. The 160 national teams, including Ireland’s 65-strong contingent, marched around the stadium and there was the traditional release of the doves of peace. Some of them settled onto the rim of the giant bowl that was about to receive the Olympic flame. All eyes were on the doves as the flame shot up the tower, ignited the gas jet, and cremated half a dozen birds, to the delight of the press corps.
My main sport was cycling and with the velodrome only a few minutes walk from the village, life was easy. I was reporting for two English papers and the nine hours time lapse between Seoul and London meant I had plenty of time in which to file my copy.
Soon after the opening ceremony, I was back to the athletics stadium for the 100-metres heats. It was a great to see the sprint stars Carl Lewis, Ben Johnson and Linford Christie close up. However, the atmosphere was a little muted; it seemed the Koreans were not switched on by track and field. I later found that the only Olympic events that captured the locals’ attention were wrestling and martial arts, which literally stopped the traffic when they were on.
Exploring the restricted area under the stands, I saw a scrum of people heading towards me. At its centre was the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, with coaches, helpers, journalists TV cameras and hangers-on trailing in his wake. I didn’t know much about Johnson at the time, but felt an aura of menace and pent-up anger emanating from Jamaican-born giant. It was like encountering a heavyweight prize-fighter on his way to the ring.
Johnson duly went on to win the 100 metres in record time. He had only three days to savour his success before the dramatic announcement that the Canadian had tested positive for steroids and was stripped of his gold.
It was the biggest story of the ’88 Games. Never had the drug testers netted such a high-profile catch. Since then athletics has become one of several Olympic sports to be dominated by doping scandals, with the sprint events in particular degenerating into a shambles.
After ten days in the city, it was a relief to get into the countryside and drive to the cycling road race course, 30 miles north of Seoul, not far from the heavily guarded border with North Korea. It was September, harvest-time, and combine harvesters were bringing in the rice crop.
East Germany was a power in world sport at the time and ranked second only to the Soviet Union in the medals table. They picked up another gold in the road race. “Another bloody East German,” was one official’s comment as winner Olaf Ludwig received his medal. In those days before the Games went open, the state-sponsored sports men and women of the Soviet bloc could not turn professional. It meant their Olympic competitors were older, stronger and better prepared than most of their amateur rivals.
Within two years of the Seoul Games, East Germany ceased to exist, and Ludwig, with several of his team-mates, emerged to pursue successful professional careers.
Interviewing winners is easy; commiserating with the losers is less pleasant, although the results are often more revealing. Britain’s Lisa Brambani had ridden well to finish 11th in the women’s road race. But as she sat in the pits afterwards a reaction had set in. “I don’t know how much longer I can carry on doing this,” she said. Perhaps thinking of her family, she added: “You have to be selfish to compete at this level, and sometimes it’s not very nice.” In fact, Lisa went on to enjoy several years of racing in the USA.
And so ended my first experience of the magic of the Games. In my sporting days I never had a hope of making the Olympics. But several of my team-mates were Olympians and competed in such exotic locations as Tokyo and Mexico City. Twenty years on, I made it to the Games, not as a competitor but in the role of a privileged observer – not a bad consolation prize.
In 1996, I attended my second Olympiad when Atlanta, USA hosted the Games. This time the magic was missing. It was a penny-pinching, rather mean-spirited event, but that’s another story.