Americans return to Moscow
MOSCOW, Russia — It was a significant moment in recent track and field history when American female discus throwers Whitney Ashley, Liz Podominick and Gia Lewis-Smallwood entered the Luzhniki stadium on Saturday morning (Moscow time) on the opening day of the 14th IAAF World Championships as they were the first Americans to compete for their national team in a meaningful senior athletics competition for more than 40 years.
Then American president Jimmy Carter had pulled out the American team from the 1980 Games after the Russian government had failed to comply with his request for them to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Some 65 other countries joined the boycott action but Jamaica sent a team that won three bronze medals. Donald Quarrie and Merlene Ottey in the 200m and cyclist David Weller became the first and only non-track and field Jamaican athlete to win a medal when he was third in the 1000m time trials.
Since 1980, Americans had competed in Moscow, at the 2006 IAAF World Indoors held in the same complex as the Luzhniki, and also sent a reserve team to the Friendship Games in 1984, made up of athletes who could not make the team to the Los Angeles Games.
Russia in retaliation to the 1980 action led by the USA, had boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics.
President Carter’s boycott was announced in March, a month after he had asked the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan, more than four months before the start of the Olympic Games.
Carter had given the Russians a month to leave the country they had invaded in 1979.
In a statement made after the invasion, Carter rebuked the Soviet Union, specifically Premier Leonid Brezhnev, and decried the invasion as a deliberate effort by a powerful government to subjugate an independent Islamic people that he called a stepping stone to control over their oil supplies.”
Brezhnev dismissed Carter’s statements as bellicose and wicked according to the Internet site Wikipedia.
The invasion threatened to revive the Cold War, which, during the late 1970s, had appeared to undergo a temporary thaw.
In addition to the boycott, Carter increased pressure on the Soviets to abandon the war in Afghanistan by issuing a trade embargo on two US goods that the country desperately needed: grain and information technology. He also restricted Soviet fishing in American-controlled ocean waters. Carter called on the UN to provide military equipment, food and other assistance to help Afghanistan’s neighbours, especially Iran and Pakistan, fend off further Soviet encroachment.
Canada, West Germany and Japan were the leading countries to join the US in boycotting the Games but Carter failed to convince Great Britain, France, Greece, Australia and Jamaica to stay away.
When an international coalition suggested that the boycotting nations send athletes to compete under a neutral Olympic banner, Carter threatened to revoke the passport of any US athlete who attempted to do so. His decision affected not only athletes, but the profits of corporate advertisers and broadcasting powerhouses like media conglomerate NBC that had television rights.
Reaction to Carter’s decision was mixed. Many Americans pitied the athletes who had worked so hard toward their goal of competing in the Olympics and who might not qualify to compete in the next games in 1984. At the same time, the boycott symbolised commitment many Americans felt to fighting the oppressive, anti-democratic Soviet regime.