A panoramic wall of 32 giant TV screens, connected like huge tiles, forms a 180-degree arc around the Summer Games gallery of Lausanne's Olympic Museum. Playing continuously on this video kaleidoscope are great moments in modern Olympic history.

Sports Shrine by Lake Geneva

Olympic Museum

A panoramic wall consisting of 32 giant TV screens, connected like huge tiles, curves in a 180-degree arc around the Summer Games gallery of Lausanne's Olympic Museum. Playing continuously on this video kaleidoscope are great moments in modern Olympic history. On one section of the wall, multiple images of Abebe Bikila run barefoot in the dark through the streets of Rome to win the marathon in 1960; on another it's 1956 again and the great Russian distance runner, Vladimir Kuts (pronounced COOTS, thus the couplet, "Vladimir, Vladimir, Vladimir Kuts, nature's attempt at a machine in boots") pounds relentlessly to another medal. There is no narration but the images are backed by a dramatic Chariots of Fire-style musical score.

Approximately every 20 minutes, on an identical wall over in the Winter Gallery, Austrian Franz Klammer plummets down the mountain in his heart-stopping 1976 gold medal run at Innsbruck. The pictures are too numerous and too fast; too much to absorb at one time. You sink down on a cushioned stool, surrounded by the Games of the past. There's Oregon State's Dick Fosbury winning the high jump by going over the bar backwards of all things; and now, in the center of the wall, that's Ohioan Dave Wottle coming from way behind in a funny little hat to win the 800 meters at the wire in Munich in 1972. Small-town American kids, a long way from home, beating the world.

It is this multiple image, black and white film-show that is the centerpiece and main goose bump provider in Lausanne's marvelous Olympic Museum. For mainstream sports fans it's a must-see, but even the casual Olympic watcher will consider the two or three hours needed for a fairly thorough museum browse as time well spent.