1976 Montreal Olympics
Also called: Games of the XXI Olympiad, Montreal 1976
Some twenty African nations stayed away over an issue tied to South African apartheid. The wrestler Yang Jung-mo won South Korea’s first Olympic gold medal since liberation.
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Some 6,000 athletes from 92 nations took part from 17 July to 1 August 1976. When the IOC refused demands to exclude New Zealand, whose rugby team had toured apartheid South Africa, some twenty African nations boycotted the Games. Taiwan also withdrew when it was barred from competing as the “Republic of China”. The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic history. Costs ballooned, and Montreal and Quebec spent thirty years paying off the debt.
On 31 July Yang Jung-mo won the freestyle wrestling 62 kg class, the first Olympic gold medal for an athlete competing under the Korean flag, forty years after Sohn Kee-chung’s victory.