Against the backdrop of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, the 1980 Moscow Olympics was always going to be political. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser wanted Australia’s Olympic athletes to boycott the Games, in line with the USA, but many of the athletes had a different view and competed under the Olympic flag. Whatever flag they competed under at Moscow, athletes were the victims—and most of them female. As Paris prepares to host the 2024 Olympics, 100 years after the Modern Olympics founding father Pierre de Coubertin declared that “Women have one task, that of the role of crowning the winner with garlands”, an indifference to female athletes lives on.
In Turning the Tide, 800 metres Swimming Gold Medal winner, Michelle Ford, charts the highs and lows from the beaches of Sydney to the dizzy heights of Olympic swimming gold in the middle of the Cold War. Along with the politics, death threats, wilful blindness and sexism, the world also witnessed the most ferocious, systematic, state-sponsored doping ever.
In conversation with Julian Linden.
Session details
When: Saturday 16th March, 1.30-2.30pm
Where: Darley Smith Building
Cost: $20