Cold War Games

AUTHOR: Harry Blutstein PUBLISHER: Echo RRP: $32.99

REVIEWER: Mary Ann Elliott

ADJUNCT Professor at RMIT University and a freelance journalist, Harry Blutstein has written a gripping account of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

Touted as the Friendly Games during the Cold War era, they were anything but that; East-West rivalry put paid to this hope. Beneath the hype of athletic prowess and adoring spectators ran a sinister undercurrent of political confrontation between the Soviet and free world approach to sport.

From the bloody water polo match between the USSR and Hungary, to the 46 athletes who defected to the West, sport and politics collided.

Based on new information from ASIO files and recently discovered documents from archives in the USSR, the United States and Hungary, Dr Blutstein reveals secret operations in Melbourne and shows just how crucial the 1956 games were for the great powers of the era.

Sport morphed into propaganda, turning athletic fields and swimming pools into battlefields where each competitor fought for supremacy.

When the Soviets won the most medals over the US, Khrushchev hailed it as a major victory in the Cold War.

Blutstein turns this story into a gripping drama, with all the ingredients of courage, endurance, intrigue, violence, triumph, tragedy and even romance, with the poignant love story between Czech discus thrower Olga Fikotova and American Hal Connolly.

He captures the mood and excitement of those tense days in a splendidly written, fast-paced tale that is compelling from beginning to end.