Word: boycotts
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Nonetheless, the 22nd Olympiad promised to be a tarnished affair. As of last week, an estimated 31 countries, including Canada, Japan, West Germany, China and Kenya, were heeding the Carter Administration's call for a boycott to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By the host country's count, 83 nations will participate. The boycott has taken the luster off such men's sports as track, basketball, boxing and gymnastics; the competition in swimming, yachting, field hockey, archery and equestrian events has become almost meaningless. Even so, the countries coming to Moscow won about...
Afghanistan aside, the Moscow spectacle is not shaping up as the kind of party that many democratic countries would feel comfortable attending. As the Soviets prepared to receive 150,000 or so visitors (about half the total expected before the boycott), Moscow resembled a giant Potemkin village being gussied up by a heavy, totalitarian hand...
...meter races also offer a classic matchup: Lasse Viren, the Finn who won both events in 1972 and 1976, and Miruts Yifter, a fast-finishing Ethiopian who missed the 1976 Olympics due to an African boycott of the Games. Viren is entered in the 10,000 but is so far undecided about whether to run the 5,000 or the marathon...
...Soviets had counted on stirring competition to help carry their socialist message across the free world. In the U.S. alone, NBC had planned more than 150 hours of television coverage; now viewers will have to settle for brief reports on news programs. But the boycott fell short too, with France, Australia and other allies refusing to join. If President Carter thought the tactic would show the Soviet people the error of Afghanistan, he was mistaken. Today ordinary Soviets claim to see little connection between the invasion and the boycott. Instead, they blame "warmongering" by Carter...
After the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, the African boycott in 1976 and the current one, no one knows what problems will beset the 23rd Olympiad. But U.S. athletes, bitterly disappointed at being sidelined in 1980, are already taking aim at 1984. "Just you wait," says Tuppeny. "We've got some kids coming along who are going to be fantastic...