Cold War Games (Harry Blutstein, Echo)

The first Olympic Games held in the Southern Hemisphere occurred in Melbourne in 1956, just as the Cold War was gaining momentum, and the same year that Soviet Russia invaded Hungary. Although dubbed by the media as the ‘friendly games’, the propaganda, paranoia and political rivalry between East and West was being played out in the sporting arena. In Cold War Games, Harry Blutstein gives an account of this interesting period of history, although there are times when this narrative is waylaid by painstaking historical context and detailed sporting statistics. What raises this book above the ordinary is the very real experiences of the athletes involved. The Soviet and Hungarian stories are especially fascinating, with insights into the lives of athletes such as Nina Ponomaryova, the first Soviet Olympic champion. Her background as an ‘undesirable’ brought up in a gulag meant she was effectively ignored in her home country despite her success. For many Hungarian athletes, the moral dilemma of returning to an occupied homeland or defecting to a free, but unknown, country became an overwhelming emotional setback to their competitive abilities. This book could be classified as part of the Olympic literature, but it also works well as a unique snippet of 1950s history.

Helene Ephraim is a freelance reviewer who has worked as a bookseller and librarian

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