Stand up, sit down: the Olympics under protest

The history of the Olympic Games is littered with people who have stood up, sat down or raised their fists for their political or personal beliefs.

The history of the Olympic Games is littered with people who have stood up, sat down or raised their fists for their political or personal beliefs.

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Whether or not Iran's world judo champion Arash Miresmaeili, who had refused to take on an Israeli opponent here, deliberately failed to make the weight for his opening bout here turns out to be a protest ploy, then it will not be a first.

At the 1968 Olympics, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won the gold and bronze medals in the men's 200 metres and during the medal ceremony they mounted the podium barefooted.

During the playing of The Star Spangled Banner, the pair also bowed their heads and each held up a clenched hand clad in a black glove.

The gesture, in support of Black Power and the civil rights movement, caused uproar at home in the United States but is now usually seen as an eloquent expression of non-violent protest.

Equally poignant were the tactics of Czech champion gymnast Vera Caslavska.

In April 1968, Caslavska had signed the Manifesto of 200 Words, which rejected Soviet domination in Czechoslavakia, and was an open opponent of the former USSR.

At the Mexico Olympics six months later, she enthralled the crowds but had to share the gold medal in the floor exercises with the Soviet Union's Larissa Petrik.

After listening first to the Czech anthem, Caslavska deliberately turning away and bowed her head during the anthem of her opponent.

The boxing ring has also seen its fair share of of protests, and not just the howling and whistling of ringside spectators at a bad decision.

In the 1964 flyweight competition, South Korea's Choh Dong Kih was disqualified in a second round bout against the Soviet fighter Stanislav Sorokin for holding his head too low.

Disconsolate and disbelieving, Choh then sat down in the middle of the ring for 51 minutes until officials persuaded him to leave.

The record for this particular outburst was then beaten in 1988 by Choh's compatriot Byun Jong-il, who had lost a scrappy bantamweight bout against Bulgaria's Alexander Hristov after being deducted points for using his head as a battering ram.

Following his countryman's example, Byun then sat down on the canvas in silent protest for 35 minutes, when he was given a chair.

He stayed motionless in the centre of the ring for a further 32 minutes, eventually giving up his futile gesture after the organisers turned off the hall lights and left him in near-darkness.

The Seoul Olympics boxing tournament also saw Sudan's Mohamed Hammad suffer one of the quickest technical knockouts in Olympic history.

Hammad took three steps forward when the bell rang in his super heavyweight bout against South Korea's Kim Yoo-hyun only to find he had been counted out before aiming a blow at his opponent.

His coach had thrown in the towel as he walked forward to protest at the decision of an earlier fight when another Korean fighter had been declared the winner over a Sudanese teammate, despite felling him with an illegal blow.

The full facts behind Miresmaeili failing to make the 66 kilogram weight limit of his catagory on Sunday are still not clear.

"Although I have trained for months and was in good shape I refused to fight my Israeli opponent to sympathize with the suffering of the people of Palestine and I do not feel upset at all," Miresmaeili was reported as saying by the Iranian IRNA news agency.

However, many observers have already commented that Miresmaeili might have been better making his point on the mat rather than the scales.