The latest sporting decision from Munich and probably the most controversial in Olympic history revolves around three seconds.

These three seconds are played three times well after midnight in the basketball final between the world powers USA and USSR - until the Americans, who have won gold since basketball debuted at the Olympic Games in 1936, finally play the 50 after a pass across the field: lose 51

Basket shooter Alexander Below is celebrated like a superhero at home.

He died of cancer in 1978 at the age of 26.

Christian Eichler

Sports correspondent in Munich.

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The chaos at the timekeeper's table, in which several people involved, including the later FIFA President Sepp Blatter as a secondary character as a representative of a Swiss watch company, play opaque roles, is never fully explained.

It is still polarizing half a century later.

"Completely irregular"

The Brazilian referee, who was then ordered by the Secretary General of the World Basketball Federation to repeat the final seconds for the second time, an unprecedented event, later called the Soviet victory "completely irregular".

To date, the Americans have not accepted the medals stored in Lausanne, despite requests from the IOC.

The Soviets are also doing well on the water, winning six out of seven finals in the canoe.

Only the Romanian Ivan Patzaichin beats them in Canadian - he comes from a Russian-speaking minority, the Lipovans.

Master butcher Detlef Lewe, flag bearer at the opening ceremony, takes bronze, the only West German canoe medal.

After the dressage riders lost to the Soviets in the team competition, Lieselott Linsenhoff took revenge with individual gold on Piaff – who almost ran away with the national anthem and was only calmed down by a horse whisperer in a green jacket.

Japanese defeat East Germany

The Japanese volleyball players, who throw their coach in the air like a stuffed animal a dozen times after beating East Germany in the final, cannot be reassured.

The German colleague Toni Rimrod sees her the next day in the Hofbräuhaus, clearly tipsy, "walking up the stairs to the first floor in a handstand".

Volleyball is a winner of Munich.

The game then experienced an enormous upswing in Germany.

The student Hans Baumgartner missed gold in the long jump with 8.18 meters by a thumb's length behind the American Randy Williams (8.24), who later became a firefighter.

Pole Wladyslaw Komar is less than a finger's width ahead of American George Woods (21.17) in the shot put (21.18).

Komar becomes a cabaret artist and actor, acting in more than twenty films.

His life ended in 1998 in an unbelievable chain of sporting misfortunes.

While driving back from a sports festival with Tadeusz Ślusarski, Olympic pole vault champion in 1976, her car collided with that of another former track and field athlete, 400-meter champion Jaroslaw Marzec.

All three athletes die.