Word: xxii
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Otherwise the XXII Olympiad was a picnic for Warsaw Pact countries. The Soviets alone won some 30% of the total medals and 40% of the golds; the East Germans took about 20% of each. East-bloc nations piled up more than three quarters of the medals awarded. But many of the medals were tarnished by the absence of leading Western competitors...
Despite all that pomp, no one at the opening ceremonies of the XXII Olympiad last Saturday could forget that it was something less than the real thing. About 30 countries that had planned to send athletes decided not to because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Of the 81 countries participating, 16 staged symbolic protests during the opening-day parade by carrying Olympic banners rather than their national flags...
...Games should be changed. New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, a basketball gold medalist in the 1964 Olympics, predicted four years ago that politics would dismantle the 1980 Games. He believes, correctly, that the crisis of this XXII Olympiad may offer the opening to do so. The politics and commercialism of the spectacle should be radically reduced. Most athletes in competition neither want nor need the political extravaganzas and financial hype. To help rescue the Olympics from their present distress, in which this nation is unavoidably an accomplice, the U.S. might...