Like so many other athletes that day, when L. Jay Silvester saw terrorists pacing a balcony in the Olympic Village sporting black ski masks and machine guns, he had just one question:
How can I get my hands on them?
The rest would be easy.
It was Munich, 1972, and Silvester and his teammates were walking to breakfast when they learned that eight terrorists had stormed the Israeli quarters in the Olympic Village. They had killed two athletes and taken nine more as hostages, not to mention an entire Olympics.
The world was holding its breath. A strange quiet fell over the village. "Swifter, higher, stronger" had given way to bullets, masks and murder. The Olympics had been used for political purposes before, but this was new territory. Terrorists were demanding the release of 200 prisoners in Israel and a get-out-of-town-free pass.
Throughout the long day, Silvester and his teammates tended to gravitate repeatedly to a place in the village where they could see the terrorists on the balcony. They marveled that murderers were right there in plain sight, and there was nothing they could do about it.
"They were behind a small wall on the balcony; you could see them from the hips up," recalls Silvester. "We went over there on a few occasions to look at them. We would look at those terrorists and feel helpless. We wanted some opportunity to be involved. We wondered how we might overcome the terrorists. With weapons. Attack the place. Something."
Silvester was 6-foot-3, 250 pounds and could bench press more than 450 pounds. He owned or would own seven world records and six national championships. Three days earlier he had won an Olympic silver medal. Silvester, who grew up in Tremonton, starred at Utah State and became a professor at BYU, was not only a world-class athlete, but he had served in the National Guard since he was a high-school senior. He had graduated from ROTC. He was a commissioned officer who had been trained with weapons and for dangerous situations. But on this day he was helpless to do anything. "It was very frustrating," he says.
Silvester learned the essence of terrorists that day: They don't declare war and meet their opponents with their armies and machines like real soldiers. They strike innocents, whether they're athletes in an Olympic Village or businesspeople in skyscrapers. They want a stage and blood, but not a fight. They will hit and run. They will hit and die. But they will not fight. How do you battle an enemy like that?
In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., government and Olympic officials fear that the Salt Lake Winter Olympics — just four months away — will be used again by fanatics. Nothing seems too far-fetched anymore. Instead of serving as a stage for athletes, the Olympics — at least the Summer Olympics — have become a stage for nuts and political causes: boycotts in Moscow, Los Angeles and Montreal, the threat of violence in Seoul, a bomb in Atlanta. By the time the Games arrived in Seoul, there were metal detectors and gun-carrying soldiers in the streets and mirrors rolled under buses to check for bombs.
Silvester, who competed in four Olympics, remembers the armed guards and tightened security that became part of the Olympics that day in Munich. He looked down through a grate in the village streets at the terrorists and their hostages as they drove away on an underground road toward the airport
"The night they left, we watched them drive away," says Silvester. "They were all killed. It took your breath away. Everything was so somber. I was glad I had already competed. People were wondering why they were there. They didn't feel like competing. It tore their heart out. There were very serious discussions about whether to continue the Games."
The Games have continued, but they've never been the same.
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. E-mail: drob@desnews.com.