1980 Summer Olympics boycott

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott began at a NATO meeting on the 20th of December 1979, just days after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan. In a matter of weeks, what started as a diplomatic discussion among Western governments would grow into the largest political disruption the Olympic Games had ever seen. More than 60 countries would ultimately refuse to participate, or participate only under strict conditions, reshaping the Moscow Games before the first race was ever run.

  For the athletes caught in the middle, the stakes were not abstract. Swimmer Jesse Vassallo had trained his whole life for Moscow. When President Jimmy Carter asked him how he would have done there, Vassallo answered plainly: he would have won two golds and a silver. Carter's reaction, Vassallo recalled, was pained. That exchange captures something essential about what the boycott actually was: a collision between geopolitics and the lives of individuals who had nothing to do with Afghanistan.

  What drove more than 60 nations to take this step? How did the IOC respond? What happened to the athletes left behind? And what did the boycott actually accomplish? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. Origins of the Boycott

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  Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov issued a public call for an Olympic boycott in early January 1980, lending moral weight to what had until then been a largely governmental conversation. Human rights groups had floated the idea of boycotting the Moscow Games in the mid-1970s, pressing on Soviet human rights violations, but that effort had attracted little sustained interest. Sakharov's call changed the atmosphere.

  President Carter responded quickly. He linked Olympic participation directly to the question of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, setting a deadline and warning of consequences. Canada aligned itself with the United States, announcing it would join the boycott if Soviet forces had not left Afghanistan by the 20th of February 1980. Carter also proposed moving the Olympics to Greece permanently to remove them from political leverage points, but the International Olympic Committee rejected the idea outright.

  Carter's administration did not simply wait for allies to decide. It actively lobbied other governments to join. One of the more unusual diplomatic missions of that period saw Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight boxing champion, travel to Tanzania, Nigeria, and Senegal at the Carter administration's request, urging their governments to support the boycott. The results were mixed: Ali failed to persuade Tanzania, Nigeria, and Senegal, but he did successfully convince Kenya to join.

• 3. Who Joined and Who Did Not

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  Sixty-eight National Olympic Committees that had been invited to the 1980 Summer Olympics did not participate, along with Qatar, whose NOC had only been recognized in February of that year and could not assemble a delegation in time. The reasons varied widely across nations.

  Japan and West Germany joined the full boycott. In West Germany, Chancellor Schmidt persuaded the West German Olympic Committee to support it. China, the Philippines, Chile, Argentina, and Norway also boycotted entirely. Israel joined as well, citing not only Soviet military aggression but also what it described as Soviet antisemitic and anti-Israel policies. Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini's new government, boycotted independently of the United States; the Ayatollah had joined the United Nations and the Islamic Conference in condemning the Afghan invasion, and separately accused Moscow of arming the Baluchis against his regime.

  Taiwan's situation was distinct. It refused to participate as a result of the 1979 Nagoya Resolution, under which the People's Republic of China had agreed to take part in IOC activities on the condition that Taiwan be referred to as the "Chinese Taipei NOC". Even so, the Sino-Soviet split led China itself to refuse sending a delegation to Moscow.

  By contrast, the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and Australia supported the boycott in principle but left the final participation decision to their national Olympic committees and individual athletes. Both the United Kingdom and France sent far smaller delegations than would otherwise have attended. Within Britain, the associations governing equestrian sports, hockey, shooting, and yachting boycotted entirely. Spain, Italy, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland sent teams, though Spain and Italy competed under a neutral Olympic flag rather than their own. Italian military athletes could not attend at all because the Italian government officially backed the boycott.

• 4. Inside the Moscow Games

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  The opening ceremony's Parade of Nations reflected just how unusual the situation had become. The 16 partially boycotting countries each sent only a flag-bearer to march after the placard-bearer, with no rest of the delegation following. For 16 countries, Olympic flags were raised at medal ceremonies instead of national ones, and the Olympic Anthem was played in place of national anthems. One awards ceremony, the men's individual pursuit in cycling, saw three Olympic flags raised simultaneously.

  The closing ceremony produced its own complications. Protocol required that the flag of the next host city be raised, but the United States strongly objected to flying the American flag. IOC Director Monique Berlioux found a resolution in an unlikely place: she noticed that the French and English versions of the rulebook differed. One version referred to the flag of the "country of the organizing city" and the other to the flag of the "organizing city" itself. Berlioux and Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee head Peter Ueberroth agreed to use the Los Angeles city flag in place of the Stars and Stripes. The Olympic hymn was played instead of the U.S. national anthem.

  Tradition called for the mayor of Montreal, the previous host city, to hand over the Olympic flag. But Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau was prevented from attending because of the boycott. Sandra Henderson and Stephane Prefontaine, who had been the final torchbearers at the Montreal Games, stepped in to perform the handover in his place. The Antwerp flag was received by an IOC member from the United States instead of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and no formal handover ceremony to Los Angeles took place at all.

  At least five national teams competed under the Olympic flag rather than their national or NOC flags, making explicit that their participation carried no official government sanction. Four competitors from New Zealand, including one athlete, marched under their NOC flag because the New Zealand government had officially backed the boycott, yet their committee chose to attend. Lord Killanin, as IOC president, permitted athletes with NOC sanction to compete without national flags or anthems, but he was firm that individuals lacking NOC approval could not participate, viewing any such exception as a threat to the IOC's authority.

• 5. Alternative Competitions

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  Athletes who chose not to go to Moscow did not simply sit out the summer. Separate events were organized across multiple sports. Track and field competitors could enter the Liberty Bell Classic, held in Philadelphia. Gymnasts had the USGF International Invitational as an outlet.

  Those events could not replicate what the Olympics offered. The Liberty Bell Classic lacked the global field, the television audiences, and the symbolic stakes that make an Olympic medal different from any other.

  One event that predated the boycott but became entangled with it was a U.S.-Cuba boxing match at the Charlotte Coliseum on the 10th of February 1980. The venue, on Independence Boulevard, is now known as Bojangles' Coliseum. The 12-bout card became the only meeting between Cuban and American boxers during that period. U.S. boxing coach Tom Johnson called it "one of the prime matches of the year." The contest's significance came as much from its rarity as from the bouts themselves.

• 6. Financial and Legal Fallout

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  In April 1981, a Federal District court in Manhattan approved the settlement of two lawsuits brought by more than 9,000 Americans seeking refunds for canceled trips to Moscow. The sums involved traced back to a single point of failure: the Russian Travel Bureau, which was the only agency authorized to book American tours to the Olympics, had collected deposits of over 10 million dollars when the boycott was first announced.

  The Soviet Union kept approximately $7.2 million of what the Bureau had collected, but had agreed to set aside $1.8 million in credits to be repaid over five years. The April 1981 settlement increased the reimbursements. Americans who had canceled their trips before the 1st of March 1980 received back 85 percent of their costs. Those who canceled after that date received 63 percent.

  The legal proceedings closed one chapter of the boycott's human cost, though the athletes who missed Moscow could not be compensated by any court. The Soviet Union would carry its own grievance into the next Olympiad, boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.