By Ken Bediako
For the third consecutive Olympic Games, Ghana entered three sports disciplines, football, boxing and athletics. Once again it was boxing that gave Ghana a medal, thanks to Prince Amartey’s bronze when he lost in the semi-finals.
Fighting in the middleweight division, Prince Amartey started punching his way to stardom with an excellent victory over Espionisa of Mexico after drawing a bye in the first round.
With brilliant footwork coupled with telling punches, Prince succeeded in disposing of the tough Mexican.
His next victory, a bruising points decision over Denmark’s Poul Knutsen, was enough to take him to the medal zone.
Amartey opened each round with a flurry of punches which unsettled his Danish opponent.
Amartey’s semi-final encounter against Viertanan of Finland was extremely exciting.
He scored repeatedly with left and right combination which kept the Finn on the ropes throughout and it was surprising that he was declared loser.
Apart from bantamweight, Joe Destimo who won one fight by outpointing Werner Schaeser of West Germany, the remaining four boxers were all eliminated in the first round.
Joe Destimo lost his second fight to Indonesian Southpaw Ferry Moniaga.
Featherweight Joe Cofie was outpointed by Cuban Orlando Palacois.
Lightwelterweight Odartey Lawson suffered a third round TKO loss to Issaka Daborg of Nigeria. The referee stopped the fight to save Lawson from unnecessary punishment.
Welterweight Flash Emma was outpointed by Damdbinjar Bandi of Mongolia and
Lightmiddleweight Ricky Barmor was also outpointed by Cuban Roland Garbey.
The athletics contingent was made up of J. A. Addy, George Daniels, Sandy Osei Agyemang, Ohene Karikari; Sprints relay- Mike Ahey, Joshua Owusu, long jump; Sam Bugri 400m, J.O. Amoah, M.A. Pomaney triple jump; Billy Fordjour 1500m, Robert Hackman 3000m steeplechase Alice Anum and Hannah Afriyie women’s sprints; Juliana Ohemeng 800m and 1 500m.
Although Ghana did not win any medal in the track and field events, long jumper Joshua Owusu and sprinter Alice Anum were quite outstanding.
Joshua placed a close 4th in the long jump final and narrowly missed what would have been Ghana’s first Olympic medal in track and field.
His leap of 8.01m equalled the distance cleared by the bronze medallist who made the jump once as against Joshua’s three attempts.
Alice Anum became the first Ghanaian female athlete to qualify for Olympic Games finals in both the 100m and 200m. She placed sixth and seventh respectively, clocking.11.4 secs in the 100m and 22.9 secs in the 200m.
Other notable performances in athletics were Osei Agyemang winning his first 100m heats in
10.5 secs, George Daniels was 4th in his 100m heats also in10.5 secs, Hannah Afriyie clocked 12 4 secs in 100m heats and placed 7th in 200m third round in 24.4 secs.
Football:
The Black Stars contingent comprised John Eshun(Capt), Essel Mensah, Lante France, Akuetteh Armah, Oliver Acquah, Edward Boye, Alex Mingle, Joe Ghartey, Clifford Odame, Osei Kofi, Kwasi Owusu, Ibrahim Sunday, Albert Essuman, Peter Lamptey, Abukari Gariba, Yaw Sam and Malik Jabir.
The team put up a disastrous performance at the Games losing all three group stage matches in Group Four.
Ghana were trounced 4-0 by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the opening match, another 4-0 by Poland and 3-1 by Colombia.
The first match was played two hours after the grand opening ceremony of the Games at the heavily packed giant Olympic Stadium in Munich. In view of the political differences between the then East Germany and West Germany at the time, the largely West German crowd rooted for Ghana.
Backed by this massive home support, Ghana attacked ferociously but the reputed Powerhouse Kwasi Owusu and sharp shooter Abukari Gariba missed a couple of close chances.
Then the East Germans took over and shot into
the lead in the 19th minute through centre forward Kreische. He cleverly beat Essel Mensah in the posts with a beautiful header.
Kreische again made it 2-0 just before the recess. The Black Stars were found wanting on resumption and it wasn’t surprising that Sparwasser increased the tally to 3-0.
In the 66th minute, Crest fallen the Stars were completely outclassed and Kreische got his personal hat-trick and the 4th for the Germans in the 89th minute.
Ghana: Essel Mensah, Akuetteh Armah, Oliver Acquah, Alex Mingle, John Eshun, Sunday Ibrahim, Osei Kofi/Peter Lamptey, Yaw Sam, Abukari Gariba, Kwasi Owusu and Malik Jabir.
In the second match played in Regensburg, about 200 kilometres north of Munich, Poland thrashed the Black Stars 4-0 in a real one sided encounter. Inside left Maszczyk scored first in the 31st minute to give Poland a half time lead. The Polish went on the rampage in the second half and speedy left winger Gadocha made it 2-0 in the 59th minute.
This goal completely took out everything in the Black Stars. Both the attack and the defence crumbled. Poland exploited the weak opposition and scored twice in the last five minutes through centre forward Deyces and Gadocha to complete the rout.
Ghana: Essel Mensah, Edward Boye/Clifford Odame, Oliver Acquah, Alex Mingle, John Eshun Joe Ghartey, Peter Lamptey, Yaw Sam, Abukari Gariba, Sunday Ibrahim and Malik Jabir.
Ghana returned to Munich and lost the third march 3-1 to less fancied Colombia. After an exciting goalless first half, Colombia took the lead in the 56th minute through centre forward Jaime Moren. Midfielder Angel Torres made it 2-0 with a header four minutes later. Ibrahim Sunday pulled one back for the Black Stars in the 79th minute but Louis Montaro got a third goal for Colombia three minutes later.
For the records, the Munich Olympics were nearly abandoned midway through the festival when some Palestinian armed men stormed the Israeli
dormitory and eventually killed 11 Israeli athletes following a failed rescue operation. The Games came to a temporary halt with calls worldwide to abandon it altogether.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) however stood firm and in the words of then IOC president American Avery Brundage “the IOC wont succumb to terrorists” in a highly tensed atmosphere arguably the world’s biggest sports festival continued to the end amidst tight security leaving a big dent in the Olympic family.
Next episode is Montreal 1976 Olympics.
Cheers everybody and keep loving sports.
