African states won new power when they demanded New Zealand withdraw because of their rugby tour of apartheid South Africa.

As the world prepares for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, can we maintain faith in the nonpolitical ethos of the event? The Montreal Olympics Games in 1976 stands out, among others, as a clear instance of the games being used for political ends.

In 1976 Montreal became only the second French-speaking city to host the event since Paris in 1924 and security issues were high on the agenda. Just four years earlier the Munich games had witnessed the tragedy of the execution of the Israeli delegation by the Palestinian Black September commando.

But apart from the withdrawal of Taiwan under pressure from China, geopolitical issues in 1976 seemed to focus on the cold war and its sporting metaphor: the Olympic competition between the US and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). With just a week to go before the opening of the games, no one could have imagined the shocking event that was about to unfold at the Montreal Olympics: a landmark boycott of the event by African countries. It was to have global resonance.

As a historian and researcher, I have co-edited several books and devoted a number...