Word: boycotts
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...three athletic powers, judged by medals won in past Olympics. Nor any athletes from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Laos, Mongolia or Viet Nam. Almost certainly, the Poles and Hungarians will stay home, though nothing is official yet; the Cubans are probable no-shows too. The Soviets obviously have carefully orchestrated the boycott, with one satellite after another falling into line, often a day apart. "We are going to be receiving a one-a-day bitter pill for some time," predicts Peter Ueberroth, president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (L.A.O.O.C.). He also fears that the Kremlin leaders will try to extend...
...Administration similarly doubts that the Soviet boycott seriously worsens the international climate. Its view is that the Kremlin leaders have been in a state of transition since Brezhnev's health began failing five years ago. Says one Administration adviser: "They have been poorly organized to make decisions involving important changes, so they just stick to the familiar," which primarily means raging at the U.S. Says another Reagan aide: "If they want to show pique, this [boycotting the Olympics] isn't a very dangerous way to do it." Reaganauts accept the idea that Moscow is signaling to the world a refusal...
...OLYMPICS SEEM to be doomed. The Soviet Union's recent decision not to send its athletes to the Summer Games in Los Angeles reflects more than just the recent decline in Soviet-American relations, more than just a tit-for-tat response to the United States for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980. The Russian pull-out reflects a now more clearly evident truth--that in their present form, the Games do not divorce politics from athletics, in fact, they do quite the opposite. They give world leaders an otherwise non-existent platform to call attention...
...torch once and for all. Such arguments strike an increasingly responsive chord, indeed, the last Games to be left unscathed by the non-athletic tug of war between rival states took place in 1968. Since then, we've seen the massacre of 11 Israelis in Munich, the African boycott of Montreal, the U.S. no-show in Moscow, and now, the big nyet from Chernenko and Co. Nor do prospects for the future look good. The 1988 Games were awarded to South Korea, thereby presenting Big Brother to the North with an ideal opportunity to wreak havoc upon its estranged friends...
...many crises of the Games seem to be irresolvable. U.S. Olympic long-distance running Coach Billy Squier suggested after the Soviet boycott was announced that many of the world's athletes consider the annual World Championships more important than the Olympics anyway, because the participants are assured of the best competition and because athletics, not politics, are the focus. Only at the Olympics are the athletes thought of first as representatives of their nations and not as individuals. Michael Jordan becomes the United States' Michael Jordan Sebastian Coe becomes Britain's Sebastian Coe. And, in the same...