In 1976, the organisers for the Summer Olympic Games published a programme to showcase Montreal’s upcoming hockey event. Can you spot the mistake?

Brochure promoting the Olympic hockey tournament of the Games held in Montreal, Canada in 1976.

Those with keen eyes will have spotted that the official hockey booklet for the XXI Olympiad features two hockey players that appear to be holding left-handed hockey sticks! You will notice that the photograph has been mistakenly flipped during the design process and printed in reverse. While the Uganda and Pakistan teams featured in the photograph were renowned for the dexterity and technical skill, playing with a left-handed stick would have been beyond even their capabilities!

This technical brochure was commissioned by the Olympic Organising Committee who had a dedicated Olympic Graphics and Design department to produce publicity materials. 21 booklets were published, each outlining a different sport to feature in that year’s Games. The photographs that were chosen for each were decided upon by the design team who had to pick one photograph for each sport from an archive of 200,000 images.

The booklets published for the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976. Each booklet depicts a different sport to feature in that year’s Games.

The Official Olympic Report published following the conclusion of the 1976 Games reveals how the look of each booklet was designed – ironically for hockey – to reflect technical aspects or specific rules of each sport. Additionally, each booklet, poster and calendar was created in conformity with the specific instructions of the 1976 Olympic Graphics Manual, which painstakingly broke down every step of the design process, from resizing images, to colours, fonts and logo sizes. Despite all these instructions and guidelines, the 1976 Montreal Olympic hockey brochure seemed to slip through the cracks. It ultimately showcased an image of hockey that was impractical and entirely unrealistic.

Interestingly, this misprint – which was flagged in Hockey Digest magazine at the time – doesn’t get a mention in the Official Olympic Report, which instead shows the print the correct way round, as does the hockey poster for the 1976 Games.

Poster created for the Montreal Olympic Games of 1976 hangs on the wall in The Hockey Museum. It features Ugandan and Pakistani hockey players. The Sikh Ugandan player in the foreground is Kuldeep Singh Bhougal. Unlike the event brochure, the poster is printed correctly.