Tokyo Games pushing ahead despite coronavirus still surging around the world

“The Games must go on.” Sound familiar?

Avery Brundage made that declaration as president of the International Olympic Committee in 1972 when a rescue mission went horribly wrong, leaving nine Israeli hostages, five Palestinian terrorists and a German policeman dead on the tarmac of the Munich airport.

It was September 5. The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September.

The IOC halted the Games for a day, then Mr Brundage uttered the five words he is most famous for.

Almost 50 years later the president of the IOC is Thomas Bach, a German fencer who won gold in 1976 and was denied the chance to defend the title when his nation joined several others in…