FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Heather Gooding didn’t immediately understand why there were masked gunmen and a tank at the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany.
In fact, it wasn’t until years later that she realized she had lived through one of the most defining moments in Olympic history, the event which became known as the Munich Massacre.
Eight members of Black September, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization broke into the Israeli compound at the 1972 Olympic Games and kidnapped the male members, demanding the release of more than 200 prisoners in Israeli jails.
Eleven Israeli athletes, coaches and a German policeman were killed, as well as five of the terrorists. Three others, who had been captured, were later released by the German government.
It was September 5, 1972, and the young Barbadian 800-metre runner recalled watching the gunmen patrol the compound from the balcony.
“We couldn’t get to the stadium where we used to go and train, not knowing what had happened the night before. We went to the Trinidadian area where the men stayed,” Gooding recalled.
“The Israelis, I think, were in the next building from them. We could see the gunmen walking on the balconies with their hoods on, the guns and everything.
“At that age I wasn’t afraid.
“I don’t know if I was too young to understand, but I can remember standing on the baloney and seeing these men not knowing what they had done the night before. There was one Israeli athlete, a lady in our camp and we were told they tried to get her that night, but all of us were asleep we did not hear anything.
“Every place was cordoned off. We couldn’t go training. It wasn’t until years after that I really realized the impact and what could have happened.”
The Games were briefly suspended. During the closing ceremony, Gooding said they were next to the Germans in the stadium, but again, she wasn’t afraid, despite rumours that the hosts were being targeted that night.
Those memories have lingered with Gooding who has since returned to Barbados after living in England for 20 years.
The clerk at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital had no idea that she would be a witness to history when she left Barbados in August 1972, still the youngest athlete to have ever represented Barbados at the Olympic Games and one of the first women to do so.
Included in that group of trailblazing women were Freida Nicholls who is now head of the local Olympians Association; National Sports Council coach Marcia Trotman; Lorna Forde and Barbara Bishop, the mother of Trinidadian Olympic swimmer George Bovell.
Their chaperone was Elizabeth Earnshaw.
Gooding’s interest in athlete had begun at age 11 and it was nurtured at the Princess Margaret School, where she was victrix ludorum for four successive years, by coach Joseph Gittens.
As part of her training sessions, Gittens took her to Bushy Park and she would run to Mapps College, sometimes with a stop in Thicketts for hill work on Star Hill.
Training would begin in earnest when they reached Mapps and Gooding became one of the island’s top middle distance runners, representing Barbados across the Caribbean and at the CARIFTA Games.
In 1972, prior to the Olympic Games, she won a silver medal in the Under-20 division in 2:23.7 and won gold the following year in 2:15.3.
She won a second silver medal in 1974 in 2:16.8.
While the memories of that event are crystal clear, other events leading up to the 1972 Games, and even her race, were not as sharp.
Gooding couldn’t recall if there were trials for selection, only that she had the top time in the 800 metres and was informed that she had been chosen. She was living in Belair, St Philip at that time with her grandparents Grace and Elliott Burrowes as her parents were already in England.
“To me it wasn’t a big deal at that time like how it is now. Everybody knew me running, especially in that area of St Philip. They just knew that I was going to represent Barbados again,” she said.
“I wasn’t a person that would get excited anyway. I always used to be calm the day of the races, never used to get nervous. I just loved running, so that is what I was doing.”
The team left Barbados for a month-long training camp in New York with Atoms Track Club. The American girls were amazed that Earnshaw and Bishop, both of whom were white, were clearly part of the Barbadian set up.
Training was tough. It was sweltering hot and they caught blisters on their feet.
“I cannot remember much of the race on the day. All I can remember everyone was bigger than I was, but I don’t remember the two laps, what time I did. I just remember I was there, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the Olympics and meeting other people.”
Gooding ran for another ten years or so for Notts Athletic Club after migrating to England in 1974. She will be taking in some of the action there this summer.
