OPINION: Remembering the 1980 Moscow Olympics Boycott Tragedy
The last time the Olympics were held in Russia, the country was the Soviet Union, or USSR. This was the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics, which were boycotted by the U.S. at the instigation of President Jimmy Carter, in retaliation for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
The return of the Olympics to Russia brought to my mind those lost 1980 Olympics, because, strangely enough, I experienced the party that took their place.
I had a couple of friends on the 1980 Olympic Sailing team. One of them was the skipper of the 40 ft. boat that I crewed on, and that we had just sailed from San Diego to Honolulu to compete in the 1980 Pan Am Clipper Cup International Yacht Race. It was a ten-day sail across the Pacific, and upon arriving at our berth in Ala Wai Harbor, and receiving our welcome lais and pina coladas, a message was delivered to my skipper.
The entire summer Olympic team had been invited to an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C. for a five day celebration of sorts, presumably hastily organized out of contrition for the boycott. Each Olympian could bring one guest.
None of our crew was interested in immediately leaving the tropics for a trip to Washington D.C. as the guest of our skipper. But, after thinking about it, I thought, what the heck. I grew up outside Washington D.C., and hadn’t been there for ten years. Besides, it sounded like a pretty swanky event. I’d have my own room at the Biltmore Hotel — something I could never afford otherwise.
So, a couple of days after arriving in Honolulu by boat, I left by air for a long trip to Washington D.C. While most of us may remember the boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics, there was little publicity of the party that replaced those Olympics. As fancy as it was, it was a heartbreaking experience.
A party can’t replace broken dreams, and time hasn’t done much to diminish the pain for those athletes.
Below is an excerpted essay by Mike Moran, written in July, 2010, titled “A call to honor all the world’s 1980 Olympians who were forced to stay home.” Mr. Moran was the chief spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee from 1978-2003 and currently is senior media consultant for Colorado Springs Sports.
Mr. Moran has given me permission to reprint these excepts from his essay, which express my feelings exactly about the boycott and ensuing party.
Thirty years ago Monday, July 26, 1980, we came to Washington with heavy hearts, the United States Olympic Team that wasn’t. 466 American athletes and our USOC staff and delegation with nowhere to go while 5,512 athletes from 81 nations competed in Moscow in the hollow 1980 Olympic Games boycotted by the U.S. and 65 other nations, persuaded by the klutzes of the Carter Administration to stay home to punish the host Soviet Union for its incursion into Afghanistan in 1979.
These athletes, the best of our nation, had come to the nation’s capitol resigned, finally, to the fact that they would not get their shot at an Olympic dream… 219 of them would never get another chance to make a future Olympic team, their dreams dying in the embers of a fire that proved to be one of the biggest mistakes ever in using sport and athletes as political pawns.
The United States Olympic Committee, mindful of the achievements and bludgeoned hopes of this team, was spending almost a million dollars to bring the team to Washington for five days of recognition and events designed to lift their spirits. During that week, there was little talk of the Games going on in Moscow, no live television in the United States, and little in the newspapers of the day. On a hot July 30 morning on the steps of the Capitol, we watched and heard President Carter thank the athletes for their sacrifice, telling them it would be significant in the effort to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and to have gone to Moscow would have validated the USSR’s aggression… When Carter departed, the American athletes, one by one, mounted the steps to receive special medals commissioned and paid for by the USOC… medals finally recognized in 2007 by the Congress of the United States as Congressional Gold Medals, the highest and most distinguished civilian award of our nation.
Before the (1980) medals presentation, the athletes heard emotional presentations from track and field great Madeline Manning Mims and pentathlete Bob Nieman, with emcee Donna de Varona. The team had to be convinced to stand when the President appeared that morning, told by then USOC Treasurer William E. Simon, to respect the office, if not the man’s decision to keep them from Moscow.
After a motorcade parade through Washington, the team was hosted [by President and Mrs. Carter] at the White House for a barbecue on the South Lawn, capping off a week of special events that included a mammoth outing at Smokey Glen Farm near Gaithersburg hosted by sponsor Levi Strauss, a nighttime tour of the historic monuments, an evening performance at Ford’s Theatre, a special reception at the Smithsonian, a parade and concert at the U.S. Marine Barracks and a special evening at the Kennedy Center with entertainers including Andy Gibb, Patti LaBelle, the Lennon Sisters, Jamie Farr, Irene Cara, and master of ceremonies Leonard Nimoy.
Years later, 1984 Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling gold medalist Jeff Blatnick, who was on that ’80 team, told a story that startles many. He was on an airplane, flying from Bismarck, ND, to Minneapolis and came upon President Carter, seated in the first-class cabin. “As soon as the plane gets up in the air and levels off, he gets up and starts saying, ‘hi’ to everybody”, recalls Blatnick. “I say to the person next to me, I wonder how this is going to be. He gets to me, I go ‘President Carter, I have met you before, I am an Olympian.‘ He looks at me and says, ‘Were you on the 1980 hockey team?’ I say, ‘No sir, I’m a wrestler, on the summer team.’ He says, ‘Oh, that was a bad decision, I’m sorry.’”
”There was really a tremendous amount of ineptness in the execution of the boycott,” said a noted author of a book on the events. “It reflected both an ignorance of the international sporting structure, the way international sport works and very poor political analysis and judgment by the Carter Administration”.
Journalist Alan Abrahamson, formerly of the Los Angeles Times and Universal Sports, penned a story in 2005 that included another statement about the boycott by former USOC Chairman and 1984 Olympic Games czar Peter Ueberroth.
“Boycotts don’t work. They only hurt athletes. That’s their only value — if people want to call that value. That’s been proven time and time again.”
Tell this to those 466 athletes who have largely been forgotten over the last three decades. The boycott killed their dreams and ended many of their careers. It almost bankrupted the USOC, which had endured the worst of the pressure and nasty political machinations out of Washington while being forced into the boycott.
As we transported the 1980 Olympians to the Washington airports, I recall seeing some of the most heart-tugging moments of my long career with the USOC… tearful farewells by athletes who were denied their biggest dreams, and then they went their ways into the next chapter of their lives.
