Eight weeks earlier, Helmut Schön had led an eleven to victory that was so good in terms of play that he broke off his tactical explanation during the briefing before the European Championship final against the Soviet Union and said: "Oh, just do what you want." They did and won 3-0.

Now Schön sees another eleven, in a different sport, and declares himself the new “hockey fan”.

Christian Eichler

Sports correspondent in Munich.

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At noon there is a rock-hard final, in which Germany defeats the favorites Pakistan 1-0 with a Michael Krause goal after a penalty corner.

Captain Carsten Keller, whose father Erwin won silver in 1936, laid the foundation for a golden German hockey dynasty by winning the final.

Three of his children later also became Olympic champions: Andreas 1992, Natascha 2004, Florian 2008. The Pakistani players behaved so embarrassingly at the award ceremony that they were banned internationally – until 1976, when President Bhutto apologized to the German government, they were pardoned.

Death threats against Heide Rosendahl

The women's sprint relay also ensures an epochal sporting moment.

Heide Rosendahl described the continuation of the games after the attack on the Israeli team as the "only right decision": "I was on the track to fight against murder and manslaughter".

After receiving a death threat, she moved from the Olympic Village to a hotel.

Unfazed by this, she, sent to the final hundred meters with only a narrow lead over East German star Renate Stecher, does not give up an inch and leads the relay team to triumph with a world record.

Frank Shorter also achieved a kind of home win.

Although he is American, he was also born in Munich, and became Olympic champion in the marathon in Munich – although a 16-year-old student, who stole into the stadium in front of him with a self-painted start number and did what he thought was the final lap, robbed him of the victory he deserved.

Dieter Kottysch, who emigrated to Germany from Poland, defeated his childhood friend Wiesław Rudkowski by a 3-2 judge's vote and became the first boxing Olympic champion from the Federal Republic.

The last gold medal of the games, the 13th for the West German team, was won by the show jumpers a day later in the "Grand Prix of the Nations", which was postponed to Monday.

The last and most difficult Olympic test, however, has to be passed by Joachim Fuchsberger, who acts as stadium announcer at the sparklingly cheerful opening ceremony as well as at the rainy, sad closing ceremony.

When he receives the news that two unidentified flying objects are approaching the Olympic Stadium, he has to decide for himself whether to warn the 80,000 spectators and, just six days after the attack, trigger a potentially fatal panic - or remain silent.

Fuchsberger makes “the hardest decision of my life” – and remains silent.

The message turns out to be a false alarm.