By Alan Abrahamson
Los Angeles Times
Brian Roney is 45, married with two kids, a park manager for California’s Lake Casitas Recreation Area. Twenty-five years have passed, yet “I just haven’t been able to get rid of that bitterness, “he said. “And it’s probably gotten worse.”
On the wall in John Azevedo’s office at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is a photo of him and the rest of 1980 U.S. wrestling team, decked out in Olympic gear they never got to wear in Moscow. He has another photo taken that summer, showing him meeting President Jimmy Carter at the White House. “That’s in a box somewhere, “Azevedo said.
For Luci Cummings, a full-time mom to two little girls, the pang of disappointment is still vivid when she sees the Olympics on television. “I feel like we sacrificed that one moment in our lives for the government, “she said. “And for what?”
Twenty-five years ago this week, the 1980 Olympic Games opened in Moscow. The U.S. team boycotted those Games in a protest orchestrated by the U.S. government over the Soviet Union’s invasion the year before of Afghanistan.
Cummings said her El Segundo, Calif., neighbors don’t know she was a gymnast on the 1980 squad, one of 466 athletes kept home by the boycott.
It is the Olympic team the U.S. does not know.
Some, such as rower Anita DeFrantz, had competed in prior Games; DeFrantz had won bronze in Montreal in 1976. Some made it later; swimmer Rowdy Gaines and gymnast Bart Conner each won gold in Los Angeles in 1984.
But of those 466, 219 didn’t qualify for any other Olympics.
“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, “said Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee. In 1984 he organized the Los Angeles Games, which were boycotted by the Soviets and others in retaliation for the Moscow action.
Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, agreed: “People have realized that boycotts are not helpful. To the contrary – people who call for a boycott are shooting their own foot.”
Added Bob Coffman, a Houston businessman who was the world’s top-ranked decathlete a quarter-century ago: “Look at Afghanistan now. The Russians aren’t there. We are.”
Jeff Blatnick, a Greco-Roman wrestler on the 1980 team who hung on to win gold at the 1984 Olympics, was on a flight from Bismarck, N.D., to Minneapolis a few years ago. Another first-class passenger was Carter.
“As soon as the plane gets up in the air and levels off, he gets up and starts saying hi to everybody, “Blatnick said in a recent interview. “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 that summer team.’
“He says, Oh, that was a bad decision. I’m sorry.'”
Blatnick paused and added, “I’m sitting there flabbergasted that this guy apologized to me in a public forum, on an airplane. In my mind, at that point, I have to forgive him. He apologized. What more can the guy do?
“At the same time, there was a part of my mind saying, can’t you do that to the 400-500 other athletes waiting for you – to hear that? I wish he could have said it to them.”
Carter’s spokeswoman declined to comment on Blatnick’s account, referring inquiries to a statement Carter issued in 1996 in which he called the boycott decision “a very difficult one for me and for other political and sports leaders in America and in many other countries.”
Derick L. Hulme, a professor at Alma College in Michigan and author of a book about the boycott, said that assuming Blatnick’s version of events is accurate, it marks a significant turn in assessing “one of the defining moments and policies of the Carter presidency.”
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 27, 1979. A few days later, Carter condemned what he called a “callous “violation of international law.
“Carter looked at the boycott, and I don’t think he was wrong here. I think he in fact was correct, “Hulme said. “This was a low-risk, potentially very high reward kind of approach to take with the Soviets.
“Clearly, if the boycott could have been pulled off successfully, in the way Carter had hoped, it would have dealt a significant symbolic blow to the Soviets – with very little cost, “Hulme added. “The cost to the United States was to those athletes who had trained their entire lives, and wouldn’t get to go.”
On Jan. 20, 1980, Carter sent the USOC a letter urging it to propose to the IOC that unless the Soviets withdrew within a month, the Games be postponed, canceled or moved.
By the end of the month, both houses of Congress had passed resolutions of support for the president’s position. In February, then-IOC president Lord Killanin of Ireland said all 73 IOC members had voted unanimously to affirm that the Games “must be held in Moscow as planned.”
Two days later, the USOC announced it would accept what- ever decision Carter made.
After Coffman said on local television in Houston that he opposed a boycott, several people drove by his house, “shouting and screaming at me that I was un-American, “he recalled. He was barred from working out at the University of Houston on the grounds he “was not an American and didn’t support the president, “he added.
In March, Carter invited a group of would-be Olympic athletes to the White House, telling them that while he wasn’t yet sure what other nations’ Olympic teams might do, “Ours will not go.”
Conner, the 1979 world champion in the parallel bars, recalled feeling stunned: “We thought we were just going to talk it over. That was it. Game over.”
In pushing to widen the boycott, Hulme said, the Carter administration failed to understand that in many countries, the Olympic committee, not the government, makes the decisions about sport.
The British government supported the boycott. But the British Olympic Association voted to go – leading to a 1,500-meter victory by Britain’s Sebastian Coe over teammate Steve Ovett. Just days before, Ovett had beaten Coe in the 800 meters.
In Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser backed the boycott, but the Australian Olympic Committee voted to go. The team went, but a number of athletes and coaches stayed home.
West Germany and Canada opted out of the Games. France and Italy were in.
Rogge, a Belgian sailor who had competed in three Olympics, recalled “an agonizing choice.”
“We were sensitive to the fact that we had been liberated twice by the Americans, in 1917 and 1944, “Rogge said. “We had great gratitude for what America did for our country and here was the president of the United States calling for a boycott.
“Part of our country was sensitive to that. Part said, ‘Listen, this is the wrong measure.'”
In the opening ceremony, the Belgians entered behind the Olympic flag, not the national colors. And Rogge, the team leader, did not march. Other nations took a similar tack.
“Carter could claim that the NATO governments supported him, but the independent national Olympic committees didn’t, “Hulme said. “That simply didn’t play. … It’s not a distinction that mattered to the world.”
Having the British and French on hand meant a victory for the Soviets, he said.
“There really was a tremendous amount of ineptness in the execution of the boycott, “Hulme said. “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.”
In April 1980, Vice President Walter Mondale told the USOC: “I am convinced that this year’s Olympic team will be honored by Americans with as much pride and enthusiasm and love as any past medal winners received.”
Time has proven that assessment wrong, team members say.
Coffman, having watched Bruce Jenner become a marketing star by winning the 1976 decathlon in Montreal, said the boycott cost him an endorsement deal with a milk company.
“I couldn’t believe that I – I guess that’s being very selfish – had worked so very hard, and (now) I had everything taken away. Why did it happen to me? Why didn’t it happen to Bruce Jenner? “he said. “Why didn’t it happen to someone else?”
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