Jon Anderson ran his heat of the 10,000 meters in a personal record 28 minutes, 34.2 seconds at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The field was deep, however – too deep for Anderson’s time to get him into the event final.
The 10,000m is usually one of the first or last running events in the Olympic format – on the opposite end of the schedule from the 5,000m – so that athletes who run both will have recovery time between the races. In 1972 it was the 10,000m that was run first. When he didn’t qualify for the final, Anderson was left with some time on his hands in Munich. Anderson shared an apartment with Kenny Moore, Steve Savage, Frank Shorter and Dave Wottle. “We had two gold medalists,” Anderson noted, smiling. “That’s pretty cool.”
The steeplechase had been held early on and Savage had missed his final as well, so the two of them ended up spending much of the time together.
“Steve and I roomed together; basically, we were in the same bedroom together is my recollection,” Anderson said. “We were all friendly, but Steve and I did a lot of stuff together.”
The two made plans to take a day trip September 5 to a resort in the foothills of the Alps south of Munich. When they woke up that morning to the news of the hostage situation, they wondered if they might cancel the trip. As tanks, troops and various emergency vehicles gathered within the view of their apartment balcony, they decided against it.
“Steve and I decided, along with his wife Peg, that we’re going to go over there anyway, go to this resort, because we’re all done and we can get the hell out of here,” Anderson said.
The three managed to get out of the Olympic Village before it was closed off, and made their way south to the resort. There, they spent the day by the swimming pool listening to Armed Forces Radio updates on the hostage situation. Around 9 p.m. they returned by subway to the village, and came upon what was close to becoming a mob scene at the gate. German soldiers had been instructed that no one was to be allowed in or out, and the crowd of people outside the gate was starting to get agitated.
“There were some young German soldiers with guns who were standing there and not letting us in. Of course, they didn’t have a clue as to what was going on either; they were just told, ‘don’t let anybody in the gate,’” Anderson said. “We were stopped at the gate along with easily several hundred other people, mostly athletes, wanting to get into the village. There were some athletes that still had to compete, or they were expecting still to compete, and they were pretty upset because of it getting late on, and here we were standing for somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour.”
Then, just as the scene looked like it might turn ugly, the crowd was distracted from its frustration when two helicopters took off from within the village.
“All of a sudden, no more than 50 yards away, the helicopters took off,” Anderson said. “At that time we didn’t know what was going on, but shortly after, they let us into the village to go home for the night and then, the next morning, we woke up to the news of what happened.”
What had happened, of course, was the removal of the terrorists and their hostages from the village in those helicopters, and the ill-fated attempt to attack the terrorists at the airport by the German police. When Anderson and Savage awoke the next morning, 16 were dead in the firefight at the airport, and some would say that the Olympic Games had lost their innocence.
Anderson, however, doesn’t see the games as being an “innocent” competition in the first place.
“Look at history. I suspect if you went back to the Greeks there was some stuff going on even then that hasn’t been documented. Don’t forget Hitler and Jesse Owens. Don’t forget the Black Power salute on the medal stand in Mexico City,” Anderson said. “It may have taken it to a different level, but you can’t say that this was the first time that politics had been injected into the Olympic Games.”
Despite his acceptance of politics being part of the Olympics, as an athlete he would prefer that wasn’t the case.
“There’s enough of an idealist in me I guess that I’d like everybody to set things aside and let the athletes compete,” he said. “I guess if I had a wish or something to communicate to people it would be, ‘Hey, leave these things alone for the competition.’”