Until a few years ago, great Olympic memories slowly and irreversibly faded away, revived perhaps only by an occasional archival clip on cable TV.

But we live in a wonderful new world now, a world with YouTube. And many of the great Olympic moments are now preserved, both for those who saw them at the time and a new generation of viewers.

So we begin a new series in the Rings blog, with the best of the 1972 Olympics, the first for which there is significant YouTube footage.

The Munich Games of course will always be remembered for the terrible slaughter of 11 Israelis by terrorists. But there was also a wealth of memorable, riveting and controversial athletic events that still have aficionados talking 36 years later.