June 20, 1976: The Panenka Penalty

June 20, 1976, 50 years ago: The Final of the 1976 UEFA European Football Championship is held at Red Star Stadium in Belgrade, Yugoslavia -- now the Rajko Mitić Stadium in Belgrade, Serbia. This was the only time UEFA the Union of European Football Associations, ever held a tournament, or the Final of a club tournament, in a Communist country. (It has since held them in former Communist countries.)

England did not qualify. Nor did France, nor Italy. Under the format then in place, only 4 teams did, including Yugoslavia, who did so only because they were the hosts, although they usually had a good team. In one Semifinal, Czechoslovakia beat the Netherlands, 3-1. In the other, West Germany, who had won the last 2 major tournaments, the 1974 World Cup and Euro 72, beat Yugoslavia, 4-2. Both games went to extra time.

The Final also went to extra time. Czechoslovakia led, 2-0 after just 25 minutes, but West Germany came back, and the game ended, 2-2. So it went to penalty kicks. Stereotypically, Germany usually win those. With the Czechs up, 4-3, Ivo Viktor, goalkeeper for Dukla Prague was ready to try to stop Bayern Munich star Uli Hoeneß, but he missed his shot completely, sending it over the crossbar.

It was now up to Antonín Panenka to face the best goalie in the world at the time, Bayern's Josef "Sepp" Maier. Taking a short and stuttering run-up, he gently struck the ball in an arcing parabola up the middle, while Maier had already dived and was resting on his knees. The Czechs had won, 5-3.

It remains the only major tournament ever won by either a united Czechoslovakia, or by the Czech Republic (a.k.a. Czechia) or Slovakia separately, although they reached the Final of the 1962 World Cup, and finished 3rd at Euro 1980.

Such a penalty attempt has been known as a "Panenka" ever since, but a stuttering run-up is almost a giveaway that this is what the player is going to do, and it gets stopped more than most shots.

A midfielder, Antonín Panenka played for Bohemians Prague from 1967 to 1981, never winning a major trophy -- except Euro 76 for his country. He then went to Rapid Wien, and helped the Vienna club win the Austrian Bundesliga in 1982 and '83; and the Austrian Cup in 1983, '84 and '85. He continued to play professionally until 1993, at age 44. He later served as team president for Bohemians. As of June 20, 2026, he is still alive.

November 21, 1995: The Dayton Agreement

November 21, 1995, 30 years ago: The Dayton Agreement is reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, outside Dayton, Ohio, ending the Bosnian Civil War. It was signed there on December 14.

It took the leadership of the President of the United States to stop it. A President who, just hours earlier, was fighting to get his own government reopened.

Taking down Slobodan Milošević and Newt Gingrich in the same week is a very impressive feat, and Bill Clinton simply doesn't get the credit he deserves.

Among the Republican politicians opposing the agreement were Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a bigot who hated anyone who wasn't white and, by his definition, "Christian"; and Representative Robert Dornan of California, a Korean War bomber pilot who so loved war that he was known as "B-1 Bob," but suddenly became a pacifist when it was a liberal Democrat enforcing a peace.

What does it say about Helms and Dornan that they were less reasonable than Slobodan Milošević? A man who killed more people in 5 years than Saddam Hussein killed in 25 years, more than Fidel Castro killed in 50 years?

Just in this war, about 31,000 soldiers died, and an equal number of civilians, many of them in concentration camps, because of their religion -- in this case, Eastern Orthodox Catholic Serbs killing Bosnians for being Muslims. It had been half a century since the Holocaust, and "Never again" had happened again, on the same continent.

Finally, after 3 years of being begged to do something, and remembering how he did nothing to end the Rwandan Genocide in Africa the year before, President Clinton met with his fellow NATO leaders, and united them, and convinced President Boris Yeltsin of Russia to stay out of it. On August 30, Operation Deliberate Force began, with NATO planes bombing "Bosnian Serb" artillery positions. On November 1, Milosevic realized he could beat the Bosnians, but he couldn't beat NATO, and let peace talks begin.

As of November 21, 2025, the peace still holds. The Nobel Committee has given the Nobel Peace Prize to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama -- but not, as yet, Bill Clinton.

March 7, 1970: The Agony of Defeat for Vinko Bogataj

March 7, 1970, 50 years ago: Vinko Bogataj achieves an unusual kind of fame, and he doesn't even know it. And it wasn't by winning. It was by losing, disastrously.

The 22-year-old native of Brezovica, in what is now the independent nation of Slovenia, was competing for Yugoslavia in the World Ski Flying Championships in Oberstdorf, in the Bavarian Alps of what was then West Germany, on the border of Austria. (Such was the nature of the multiethnic, multireligious Yugoslavia that Bogataj's hometown was closer to Oberstdorf than it was to the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, now in Serbia.)

The event was covered by American network ABC, for its program Wide World of Sports, even though there were no American competitors. The show's introduction was narrated by the show's host, Jim McKay, and written by Stanley Ralph Ross, who later wrote for the TV shows Batman and The Monkees, and co-created the 1975-79 Wonder Woman TV show:

Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport: The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition! This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!

Going into the March 21, 1970 broadcast, the scene used to symbolize "the agony of defeat" in their opening montage was of a downhill skier falling. Perhaps this was foreshadowing. That day, they broadcast the World Ski Flying Championships, contested 2 weeks earlier. 

A light snow had begun falling at the start of the competition, and by the time Bogataj was ready for his third jump on the Heini Klopfer Hill, the snow had become quite heavy. Midway down the inrun for his jump, Bogataj realized that the conditions had made the ramp too fast. He attempted to lower his center of gravity and slow his jump. Instead, he lost his balance completely, and hurtled out of control off the end of the inrun, tumbling and flipping wildly, and crashing through a light retaining fence near a crowd of spectators before coming to a halt.

ABC's announcer was Bud Palmer, a Princeton graduate who played for the early New York Knicks before moving into broadcasting. He said, "Lot of speed on that track now. Look out! Look at him go! Oh! Oh, baby! What a terrible fall!"

Bogataj suffered a mild concussion and a broken ankle, and was competing again 6 weeks later. By that point, WWOS had begun using Bogataj's fall to represent "the agony of defeat" in the opening montage, a decision made by coordinating producer Dennis Lewin. The show kept that sequence as such until the end of its run in 1998.

When the show was preparing to celebrate its 20th Anniversary in 1981, they found him in Lesce, Slovenia, and invited him to come to America -- not an easy thing to do, since Yugoslavia was a Communist country. He was long retired from competition, a ski instructor, a forklift operator, and a painter, and had no idea that he was famous in America. When he was introduced at the anniversary dinner, he got a longer standing ovation than anyone -- even Muhammad Ali, who asked him for his autograph.

In 1991, for the show's 30th Anniversary, while on his way to an interview with Wide World of Sports about the incident, he got into a small automobile collision. His first line to the reporter was, "Every time I'm on ABC, I crash."

Vinko with one of his paintings

In his own country, he became known for his painting. He married and had 2 daughters. He is still alive.