Overshadowed by Controversy: Difference between revisions
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* The 1936 Summer Olympics is notable for being the first Olympiad to be televised, the Olympic torch relay and pioneering techniques in sports coverage. It also happened to be hosted in Berlin, Nazi Germany, and unsurprisingly, [[Hitler]] tried to turn the Berlin Olympics into a propaganda show for the Nazis to supposedly demonstrate Aryan superiority; this propaganda attempt at presenting the so-called Aryans as the "[[Blatant Lies|master race]]" failed utterly though, especially when African-American track and field athlete Jesse Owens emerged as [[Curb Stomp Battle|the most successful athlete]] in the Games, scoring four gold medals much to the Nazis' embarrassment.
* The 1972 Summer Olympics became more infamous for the Munich massacre, where eleven Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group, with a West German police officer being killed in an unsuccessful rescue attempt. It even overshadowed a Black Power salute controversy and allegations that a basketball game was rigged at the expense of the American team. The fallout from the massacre, particularly with an egregious lack of preparation on the part of the German authorities and restrictions imposed by the post-war West German constitution i.e. a pacifistic policy not unlike Japan's renunciation of warfare, led to the creation of the elite counter-terrorist unit [[wikipedia:GSG 9|GSG 9]].
* The 1980 Summer Olympics is better remembered for the wide-scale boycott by the United States and its allies in protest of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan (which in itself became controversial as it degenerated to what amounts to the Soviets' version of the [[Vietnam War]] -- i.e. an unsuccessful act of intervention similar to the United States' failed efforts to repel the Vietcong forces). The Soviets later retaliated when they along with most of their allies; China, Romania and Yugoslavia did not participate in the boycott due to their own disagreements with the USSR, and a few of those who did boycott the games, such as Albania, Iran and Libya, boycotted the games for reasons different from those of the Soviets. The 1984 boycott had far less impact than the earlier US-led boycott though.
* The 2013 Boston Marathon went down in history due to a deadly domestic terrorist attack involving two Chechen-born men whose pressure cooker bomb attacks were "retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq", "in the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world". Despite the Islamist motive in the attacks, the Tsarnaev brothers were not connected to any known Islamic jihadist groups.
* FIFA is notorious for its rampant corruption, and it painted itself into a corner in 2015 when nine high-ranking officials and five associated businesspeople were indicted by the United States Justice Department for wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. The 2014 propaganda film, er, biopic, ''[[United Passions]]'' made the sporting body even more of a laughingstock as the film vainly tried to paint a picture of Sepp Blatter and his cohorts as [[Blatant Lies|anti-corruption crusaders]]. Not helping matters was Blatter being accused of sexual assault by American goalkeeper Hope Solo.
* The Washington Redskins' name became the subject of controversy in the wake of controversies relating to cultural appropriation of Indigenous American tribes. Pressure from organisations and corporations eventually forced the team to use the provisional name "The Washington Football Team" until they come up with a permanent name.
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