Top 100 momentsNo. 97
South Africa walks back in
After three decades of exile, South Africa competes in Barcelona. Apartheid’s sporting isolation ends in an Olympic parade, not a speech.
South Africa had been locked out of the Olympics since the 1960s. In Barcelona 1992 the team is back, under a new flag, in a Games that also has a Dream Team and a unified Germany. The isolation of apartheid sport — rugby tours, cricket bans, Olympic exile — is one of the sanctions that actually bit.
Mandela’s election is still two years away. The athletes are a preview. A country that had been a sporting island is on the floor of an opening ceremony again.
Boycotts are blunt. This one had a measurable end: a team in Barcelona, then a Rugby World Cup, then a country trying to use sport as glue. 1992 is the re-entry stamp.