Olympic Games of 1980

The Event The staging of winter and summer international athletic competitions, held every four years

Date Winter Games, February 14-23, 1980; Summer Games, July 19-August 3, 1980

Place Winter Games, Lake Placid, New York; Summer Games, Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)

The year 1980 marked the quadrennial celebration of the Olympic Games. The Winter Games were hosted by Lake Placid for the second time, while Moscow became the first city governed by a Communist government to host an Olympics.

The stunning gold medal performance of the U.S. men’s ice hockey team at the Winter Games provided a morale boost to a country dealing with economic problems at home and political crises around the world, and it helped to cover up an otherwise mediocre performance by the entire U.S. Olympic squad. The absence of more than fifty nations at the Summer Games as the result of a boycott ensured the domination of Soviet and Eastern European athletes.

Successes and Setbacks at Lake Placid

The expectations for the Winter Games, hosted by Lake Placid, New York, were immediately put into doubt because of a chronically failing transportation system. The small roads and inadequate transportation ensured that many spectators either arrived late to their events or never made it to them at all. Attendance at the opening ceremonies, for example, was at less than capacity because many people were stranded and unable to get to the stadium.

Compounding the problems at the beginning of the Olympics was an unusual weather pattern that meant that almost no snow was on the ground. Artificial snow was made in order to cover the numerous bare spots, but the conditions did not negatively affect the athletes’ performances. The conditions especially did not bother Swedish skier Ingemar Stenmark, who won gold medals in both the giant slalom and slalom. In the slalom, Stenmark held off American Phil Mahre, winning by half a second.

A total of thirty-seven nations and 1,072 athletes made up the Lake Placid Olympics. When the Games were over, the Soviet Union, as expected, had won more gold medals (ten) than any other nation. Its haul of twenty-two total medals was one less than East Germany. The United States finished third in the medal count, with only six gold and twelve total medals.

At Lake Placid, the People’s Republic of China participated in the Olympic Games for the first time in thirty years. China had been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) prior to the Communist takeover of the country in 1949. Soon thereafter, the Communists formed a new National Olympic Committee, arguing that they were the legitimate and legal authority over all Chinese sports. However, the Nationalist Chinese, who had fled to Taiwan, maintained that they were the leaders of all international sports in China. The IOC and the Communist and Nationalist Chinese debated this issue for almost a decade. Then, in 1958, believing that the IOC was not going to grant it control over the Olympic program in Taiwan, China withdrew from the IOC and the various international federations that governed individual sports. The Chinese did not win any medals at Lake Placid, but their return to the Olympics was important for the IOC because the absence of China—which represented one of the world’s largest populations—had many IOC members believing that the Olympics was than less a truly international event.

The United States won six gold medals, but one team and one man were responsible for them. The men’s hockey team won one, while speed skater Eric Heiden stood atop the medal podium after all five events in which he participated. What made Heiden’s feats even more amazing was that he set Olympic records in all five distances. He capped off his year by being named the winner of the James E. Sullivan Award, given to the top amateur athlete in the United States. The twenty-one-year-old from Wisconsin had ensured his place in the annals of great Olympians. A few years later, Heiden demonstrated his athletic prowess and versatility when he participated in the preeminent event in cycling, the Tour de France.

There seemed to be no question that the American figure skating pair of Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner should have won a medal, probably gold; they were the reigning world champions in their event, and it seemed that they were the team to end the Soviet Union’s domination of the event. However, Gardner suffered a leg injury during a pre-Olympic practice, and then he aggravated it just prior to the Games. As a stunned crowd watched—both in the stadium and on television—he tried to warm up but could not. He fell while attempting to complete a jump; then he almost dropped his partner while trying to lift her. Moments later, an announcement indicating that Gardner and Babilonia were pulling out of the competition was made. She cried as she left the ice. A few days later, Irina Rodnina and her husband Alexander Zaitsev won the gold medal for the second straight time. The win gave Rodnina her third consecutive gold medal in that event. Rodnina also won ten World Figure Skating Championships is a row in pairs figure skating.

Another American skater, Linda Fratianne, also entered Lake Placid with a reasonable expectation of gold. However, like Babilonia and Gardner, she came up short on the Olympic stage. Fratianne had won four consecutive U.S. championships in ladies’ figure skating; she also had finished first at the World Figure Skating Championships in 1977 and 1979. Her rival, East German Anett Pötzsch, narrowly won the gold medal. Pötzsch became the world champion in 1978, preventing Fratianne from being a three-time winner at that competition. Perhaps still suffering from a letdown, Fratianne later finished third at the 1980 world championships. She became a professional skater soon after.

Another four-time U.S. champion, Charles Tickner, also found little luck in Lake Placid. He finished third in the men’s figure skating event. Britain’s Robin Cousins won the gold medal.

Soviets and Their Allies Dominate in Moscow

The Olympic showcase left Lake Placid in late February. Its summer showcase began five months later in Moscow. More than five thousand athletes representing eighty nations competed. Because of the U.S.-led boycott, this was the fewest number of nations at a Summer Olympics in twenty-four years. No U.S. athlete took part in the Summer Games, ensuring that the host Soviet Union and its allies would be without serious competition in many of the events in which they took part. The results bore out that fact: Soviet athletes won more medals (80 gold, 195 total) than athletes from any other country.

Perhaps the most impressive Soviet Olympian was men’s gymnast Alexander Dityatin, who took home eight medals (three gold), more than any other athlete in a single Games. Soviet swimmer Vladimir Salnikov won three gold medals. His best performance came in the 1,500-meter freestyle, in which he became the first person to swim that race in less than fifteen minutes. Soviet canoeist Uladzimir Parfianovich also won three gold medals in his sport. Soviet women also fared well, with gymnasts Natalia Shaposhnikova (two gold, four total) and Yelena Davydova (two gold, three total) among the most decorated female athletes.

Soviet and East German women nearly completely rewrote the track-and-field record book. Nine records were set in Moscow, four by Soviet women and the other five by the East Germans. East German women also set eleven Olympic records in swimming. Rumors that East Germany had used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to shape its Olympic champions were proven true after the collapse of the Soviet empire in the early 1990’s. Meanwhile, Cuban boxer Teófilo Stevenson became the first man to win three straight gold medals in the heavyweight division, leaving many members of the world’s media (especially in the United States) to wonder what kind of professional Stevenson might be if he were allowed to leave Cuba.

British runners Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe engaged in their own kind of Cold War competition during the Moscow Olympics. Despite sharing a homeland, the men were not friendly, and they had not raced in the same event in two years. Coe was the world’s best at the 800 meters, and Ovett was the undisputed king at 1,500 meters. Entering the Olympics, Ovett had not lost a race at that distance in almost three years. In the 800 meters final, Ovett trailed for most of the race but used a late charge to overtake Coe and win the gold medal. Coe took home the silver. Six days later, Ovett, who held the world record in the 1,500 meters, was expected to win his second gold. However, Coe chased him down and finished first. Ovett faded and ended up third.

American athletes were not the only ones denied a chance at success in Moscow. So, too, was the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the network that had paid more than $72 million for the rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States. Because of economic sanctions imposed by President Jimmy Carter on the Soviet Union because of its military invasion of Afghanistan, NBC was not able to meet the terms of its contract and abandoned plans to cover the Games on a daily basis. Estimates state that the network lost somewhere between $15 million and $40 million because of the boycott.

Impact

The symbolic power of sports might never have been more evident than during the 1980 Olympic year. At Lake Placid, a group of young men, “college kids” as they were affectionately called in the United States, took down the mighty Soviet hockey team and every other one they faced to win a gold medal. In doing so, they provided a symbolic demonstration of the vitality of the U.S. political and social system. Then, in Moscow, the Soviet government was able to make the same argument about its political and social system because of the record-setting efforts of Soviet athletes. The idea that the Olympics were just games and celebrations of sport appeared a hollow argument. Only the most idealistic of IOC members could make the case that their organization had successfully kept politics from interfering with sports.

Bibliography

Guttmann, Allen. The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games. 2d ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. An easy-to-read, detailed account of the positive and negative events that have affected the growth of the Olympic Games.

Hazan, Baruch. Olympic Sports and Propaganda Games: Moscow 1980. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1982. A well-researched book that examines multiple facets of the 1980 Summer Games.

Novikov, I. T., ed. Games of the XXII Olympiad, Moscow, 1980: Official Report of the Organizing Committee of the Games of the XXII Olympiad, Moscow, 1980. Moscow: Fitzkultura i Sport, 1981. This official report glosses over deficiencies associated with the 1980 Summer Games. However, it is a strong primary source document for anyone studying the Olympics.

Riordan, James. Soviet Sports Background to the Olympics. London: Washington News Books, 1980. Riordan is a prominent researcher and has written substantially about the Soviet Union and its sports programs. This book examines why the Soviet Union placed such importance on succeeding at the Olympics.