![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784454492_462_default.jpg\")
Members of the Nigerian Olympic team prepare for their journey home at Montreal’s Mirabel Airport on July 16, 1976 after it was announced they would boycott the Olympic Games. The boycott came after the IOC refused to expel New Zealand from competition. (The Canadian Press)<\/p>\n
The day after the announcement, Obajimi watched the opening ceremony of the Games at Heathrow Airport during a fuel stop on her way back to Lagos.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all in tears. I couldn\u2019t believe it. It was a big shock,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As Montreal marks the 50th anniversary of the only Summer Olympics held in Canada, the 1976 Games stand out to Obajimi as a fleeting moment that brought pain \u2014 yet enduring pride.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was glad that I could beat my chest to say that, for apartheid to end in South Africa, we were part of those that paid the big price.\u201d<\/p>\n
The great race that never was<\/p>\n
Tanzania\u2019s track star Filbert Bayi says he accepted the news of the boycott soon after learning about it. He had already been pulled out of events involving New Zealand earlier that year over the country\u2019s decision to invite South Africa to take part in a softball tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Headlines speculating about Bayi\u2019s highly anticipated appearance at the 1976 Games had been swirling for months. His 1500m race against New Zealand\u2019s John Walker was supposed to be a showdown for the ages, with the two setting and outdoing each other’s records in the leadup.<\/p>\n
But, the Supreme Council for Sport in Africa (SCSA) had been threatening a boycott since at least May after New Zealand\u2019s rugby team announced the South Africa tour.<\/p>\n
After many negotiations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ultimately did not grant the African nations\u2019 request to bar New Zealand from participating at the Olympics. As far as it was concerned, rugby was not an Olympic sport, therefore the matter fell outside the IOC\u2019s jurisdiction \u2013 and it had already barred South Africa from competing since 1964 due the country\u2019s apartheid policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then we said \u2018OK fine, if they agree and share this Olympics with the people who shared [with] South Africa \u2026 Let it go,\u2019\u201d said Bayi.<\/p>\n
PHOTOS | Filbert Bayi pulls out of the 1976 Games:<\/p>\n
Tanzania officially withdrew its contingent from the competition a week before the start of the Games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bayi read about Walker\u2019s winning time at the 1976 Games in the newspaper. It was five seconds slower than what Bayi says he himself had run at a competition just two months earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could have won, if not gold medal \u2013 the first gold medal for Tanzania \u2013 maybe silver or any medal,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To this day, Tanzania\u2019s medal count includes just two silvers, both won in the 1980 Moscow Games \u2014 one of them by Bayi.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was ready [in 1976] and I’m sure John Walker was very happy when I wasn’t there,\u201d he said, adding that Walker has assured him since those Games that he was, in fact, not happy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although the two met on several occasions after that, it was never again on the racetrack.<\/p>\n
Did the boycott work?<\/p>\n
The 1976 boycott movement started slowly and then unfolded\u00a0all at once, with the majority of the participating nations pulling out the day after the opening ceremony.<\/p>\n
Jean L\u00e9vesque, who teaches history at UQAM, says the 1976 boycott was a step in a larger process.<\/p>\n
Years earlier, when the IOC suggested it would invite South Africa to the 1968 Games, the threat of an African-led boycott stopped it in its tracks. Most of the African countries that issued ultimatums had just gained their independence and entered the IOC.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they didn\u2019t win many medals, at least they had a platform to voice and have more support [internationally],\u201d said L\u00e9vesque.<\/p>\n
Immediately following the 1976 boycott, South Africa was expelled from the international federation governing track and field.<\/p>\n
The following year, in a bid to save the 1978 Commonwealth Games, the association\u2019s member states, including New Zealand, agreed to cut all sports ties with South Africa so long as it continued its policy of apartheid.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784454493_134_default.jpg\")
A protester wearing a placard and distributing leaflets against the 1979 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan and advocating for the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympic Games. Sixty-six countries joined the US-led boycott of the Games that year. (Steve Powell\/Allsport\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The 1976 protest also set the stage for the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Games, according to L\u00e9vesque, which was related to the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan and Cold War divisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cMontreal was a precedent,\u201d said L\u00e9vesque. \u201cOnce you use the boycott \u2026 to raise your voice and to make a statement and try to influence policies, it’s easy to get back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On politics and athletes<\/p>\n
Despite the abusive effects of South Africa’s policies on its Black athletes, the question of whether sports should mix with politics was raised constantly by officials involved in the 1976 Games.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The question continues to arise today, but sports historian Helen Lenskyj says the answer was already evident in 1976.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course it\u2019s political,\u201d she said. \u201cIt involves politicians, it\u2019s geopolitical in the sense it involves nation states fighting to get gains.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says the world hasn\u2019t seen a repeat of the Olympic boycotts from the 70s and 80s because the strategy has evolved to target, most notably, sponsors.<\/p>\n
Obajimi and Bayi both say that, in hindsight, they don\u2019t think governments should use their athletes to push political agendas, given the sacrifice that training for the Olympics entails.<\/p>\n
Bayi says he believes he was at his prime in 1976.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [the 1976 Games] will remain as history to me. It is history. It has passed. It will never come and I will not be the same as I used to be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
PHOTOS | Gloria Obajimi’s journey to and since the 1976 Games:<\/p>\n
In 2000, Obajimi visited South Africa, finding herself being able to move around and exist as a Black person in a way that would not have been possible just a decade earlier.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happy. This is the South Africa that we boycotted the 1976 Olympic Games for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Obajimi did fulfil her Olympic dream by representing Nigeria in Moscow in 1980, but stress related to her university exams meant those didn\u2019t go so well. She says that for some time, the 1976 Games left a vacuum inside her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now 70 and retired, Obajimi sees her status as an almost-Olympian at 20 as a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had gone there [to the 1976 Olympics] although I wasn’t able to compete. But it’s all part of life. And then we move on from there,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd looking at my life in its entirety, I can see that I don’t have any regrets about that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigerian sprinter Gloria Obajimi had just purchased a new camera at the Olympic Village when she learned she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-811905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}