Olympic Boycotts
The Olympic Boycotts of the 1980s were significant political events that occurred during the Cold War, notably surrounding the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. The 1980 Moscow Games were the first Olympics hosted by the Soviet Union, which had invested heavily in the event to showcase its accomplishments. However, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the United States led a boycott, with President Carter urging other nations to withdraw their participation unless the Soviets withdrew their military presence. Ultimately, 58 countries joined the U.S. in the boycott, resulting in the lowest number of participating nations since 1952.
In retaliation, the Soviet Union and 13 Eastern Bloc countries boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, citing concerns about athlete safety and escalating tensions with the U.S. under President Reagan. This response highlighted the political dynamics of the time, as the Soviet boycott served as a reaction to the earlier American protest. The events of the 1980s showcased how Olympic participation became intertwined with international politics, establishing a precedent for future boycotts, including the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. These boycotts exemplify the ongoing struggle between sports and global political issues, reflecting diverse national interests and ideological conflicts.
Olympic Boycotts of the 1980s
Date March 21, 1980, and May 8, 1984
In boycotting the Olympic Games in 1980 and 1984, respectively, the United States and the Soviet Union used the occasion of the Olympics to display their own political views.
Locale Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia); Los Angeles, California
Key Figures
Jimmy Carter (b. 1924), president of the United States, 1977-1981Robert Kane (1911-1992), president of the United States Olympic Committee, 1977-1981Yuri Andropov (1914-1984), general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1982-1984Konstantin Chernenko (1911-1985), general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1984-1985Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), president of the United States, 1981-1989
Summary of Event
The Soviet Union was the first communist country to host the Summer Olympics. The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were conducted from July 19 to August 13, 1980, in Moscow. The Soviet Union invested nine billion dollars to host the Olympic Games, probably the most important event for the Soviet Union since World War II. The Soviet Union was going to use the Games to showcase the nation’s achievements to the world.
On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union began an invasion of Afghanistan. The United States officially condemned the invasion. On January 20, 1980, President Jimmy Carter wrote a letter to Robert Kane, president of the US Olympic Committee (USOC), in which he requested that Kane submit a proposal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to have the venue of the twenty-second Olympiad changed if the Soviet Union did not withdraw military forces from Afghanistan. In addition, Carter stated that the United States would not send a team to the Games if the IOC did not adopt the proposal. On February 12, 1980, the IOC stated that the twenty-second Olympiad would be held in Moscow as planned.
President Carter issued an ultimatum: The United States would boycott the Moscow Olympics if Soviet troops did not withdraw from Afghanistan by February 20, 1980. The withdrawal did not take place. In addition to boycotting the Moscow Olympic Games, Carter called for trade restrictions on Soviet grain and high-technology products. The official statement announcing that the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympic Games was issued on March 21, 1980.
President Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Olympic Games was motivated by the impact that an American pullout would have on the economics of the Moscow Games. The absence of American media coverage of the Games would lead to a major economic setback, as the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was to give 152 hours of programming to the Moscow Games. Its advertising time was almost sold out, at $190,000 a minute. In addition, the boycott of the Games was representative of American public opinion toward Soviet political actions. However, there was no realistic belief that the boycott of the Olympic Games would put pressure on the Soviet Union to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
On the international level, a total of fifty-eight countries joined the American boycott of the Olympics, including West Germany, Japan, China, and Canada. However, a number of Western European nations sent athletes to participate in Moscow. In Great Britain, the government advised the British Olympic Authority (BOA) to boycott the Games, but on March 25, the BOA voted to accept attendance to the Moscow Games. Other Western European nations, including France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Finland, did not boycott.
As a result of the US-led boycott, the Moscow Olympics had the lowest number of participating nations since the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games. Only eighty-one nations participated, but more world records were set in the Moscow Olympics than in the 1976 Games held in Montreal. The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics cost the Soviet Union an estimated $400 million in lost tourism and investment.
Four years later, the Summer Olympics were scheduled to be held in Los Angeles, California—the only city that bid to host the 1984 Summer Games. The Los Angeles Olympics were devoid of municipal funding, because the citizens of Los Angeles had voted five to one not to use any local taxes for the Games. Under the leadership of Peter Ueberroth, president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, the Games were supported solely by funds from the private sector for the first time.
From a political perspective, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were tarnished by the Soviet Union’s call for an Eastern Bloc boycott of the Games. The Soviet-led boycott of the Los Angeles Games was, for the most part, a political retaliation for the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games.
On February 9, 1984, Soviet premier Yuri Andropov died. Until that time, only minor concerns had been voiced in the Soviet Union about attending the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and all circumstances indicated that the Soviets would attend the Games. However, when communist hard-liner Konstantin Chernenko took control of the Soviet Union, the issue of a Soviet boycott became more prevalent.
On May 8, 1984, the Soviet Union announced that it would boycott the Summer Olympic Games, citing security problems with sending athletes to Los Angeles. The contention was that Soviet athletes would be harassed and that the safety of the athletes and Soviet officials would be compromised. The boycott had an overriding symbolic meaning, however—the Kremlin’s deepening antagonism toward President Ronald Reagan—that outweighed the supposed security issues. In March, 1983, Reagan had made a speech in which he referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” In addition, Reagan’s approval of deploying new nuclear missiles in Europe during the fall of 1983 did not sit well with many Soviet officials. Prior to the Olympic Games, the Reagan administration had broken off nuclear arms control talks with the Soviets, and this had also influenced the decision. The Soviet boycott was fueled more by attitudes toward American foreign policy under the Reagan administration than by security concerns about athletes attending the Games in Los Angeles.
The Soviet Union and thirteen Eastern Bloc nations boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics. These nations had accounted for 58 percent of the gold medals won in the 1976 Summer Games. The boycotting nations organized a separate sports festival called the Friendship Games. The 1984 Olympic Games were attended by 6,829 athletes from 140 nations. Several communist nations participated, including China, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Romania completed the Games with a national record of fifty-three medals.
Significance
Since the inception of the modern Olympic Games in 1896, politics has played a role in the Games a number of times. Despite efforts to keep the international sporting competition free of ideological posturing, nations have often used the Olympics as an international forum for the display of their particular political stances. The boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games helped serve as a model for later Olympic boycotts, namely the US-led diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, due to China's ongoing persecution of the Uyghur people, which the US and other nations have classified as a genocide. This diplomatic boycott meant that no officials from the boycotting nations attended the games in an official capacity, although athletes from those countries still participated.
Bibliography
Albertson, Lisa H., ed. Athens to Atlanta: One Hundred Years of Glory. Salt Lake City, Utah: Commemorative Publications, 1995. Provides an overview of the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games.
Espy, Richard. The Politics of the Olympic Games. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Provides a historical account of the political, social, and economic forces that have influenced the conduct of the Olympic Games.
Hulme, Derick L. The Political Olympics: Moscow, Afghanistan and the 1980 U.S. Boycott. New York: Praeger, 1990. An examination of the political differences between the United States and the Soviet Union that brought about the 1980 American boycott of the Olympic Games.
Mather, Victor. "The Diplomatic Boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Explained." The New York Times, 6 Feb. 2022, www.nytimes.com/article/diplomatic-boycott-olympics.html. Accessed 8 Mar. 2022.
Segrave, Jim, and Donald Chu, eds. Olympism. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 1981. Collection of essays includes several that discuss the relationship between politics and the Olympic Games.
Wilson, Harold E., Jr. “The Golden Opportunity: Romania’s Political Manipulation of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.” Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies 3 (1994): 83-97. Provides an analysis of Romania’s defiance of the Soviet boycott of the Olympic Games.