ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that the modern Olympic Games have been an enormous success if the sole criterion is growth: increases in the number of participants, intensified media awareness, boosted economies, improved levels of achievement. In 1936 the Olympic Games were harnessed to the Nazi propaganda machine. In 1968 they staged a setting for the ‘Black Power’ protest. In 1972 they were the scene of the greatest tragedy in the history of the Olympic Games, when eleven Israelis lost their lives as a result of a Palestinian terror action. The games again became the scene of international political conflict in 1980 when the Americans boycotted the Moscow Games and in 1984 when the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Games. The merging of political and commercial interests in sport created good growth conditions for another element, which came to be perceived as subversive – the use of doping.
