Middle-distance runner Peter Bol, who escaped civil war in Sudan before going on to represent Australia at two Olympics and claim a Commonwealth Games medal, has been recognised for his charitable work.

So John Carlos says to Tommie Smith - "Hey Tommie, I left my gloves in the Village. Sorry, man. But listen - Pete Norman’s just said let's wear one each. Why not? Get him one of our badges and let’s go!"

The image of the black-gloved, raised fists protest by 200 metres medallists Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympics has assumed iconic status.

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe underlined his support for athletes taking a knee at next year's postponed Olympic Games by giving the annual President’s Award to the trio who famously protested on the podium at the 1968 Mexico Olympics - Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos.

Former Olympian and Labour Senator Nova Peris has claimed the establishment of a statue to Peter Norman, who played a part in the hugely controversial men’s 200m podium protest for civil rights at the Mexico 1968 Olympics, was "long overdue".

In the space of the last month there have been significant official acknowledgements of the role played by the three athletes who took part in the most infamous - at the time - and now famous podium protests - Tommie Smith and John Carlos of the United States, and Australia’s Peter Norman.

Politics has been intermingled with sport in every one of the modern Olympics. That mixture was at its most violent and shocking at the 1972 Munich Games, when the Palestinian Black September group took 11 Israeli Olympic team members hostage, seeking a release of prisoners, and ended up killing them along with a West German police officer.

Late Australian Olympian Peter Norman will be honoured with a bronze statue at the Lakeside Stadium in Melbourne.

Australia's late Olympian Peter Norman has been honoured in a special ceremony at the National Sports Museum at Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) has awarded a posthumous Order of Merit to Peter Norman, the sprinter involved in the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

The gymnastics career of Vera Caslavska, the seven-time Olympic champion who died this week aged 74, will live on in history. But above and beyond her sporting achievement is the memory of how she effectively ended that career at the 1968 Mexico Games with a podium protest against the Soviet Union, whose forces had invaded her homeland of Czechoslovakia two months earlier.