1980 Moscow Olympics Boycott: The US-Led Protest Over Afghanistan

The 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, held from 19 July to 3 August 1980, were the first Games staged in a communist country, and among the most politically divided in Olympic history. In protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the United States led a boycott that kept about 65 nations away. The boycott failed to change Soviet policy but cost a generation of athletes their Olympic chance and prompted a Soviet-led boycott four years later.

Background: Moscow wins the Games

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 1980 Games to Moscow in 1974, choosing it over Los Angeles. For the Soviet leadership under Leonid Brezhnev, they were a chance to showcase the achievements of socialism. New venues, hotels and an Olympic village were built, and the bear cub Misha was chosen as mascot.

The Games came at the end of a decade of détente, or easing of Cold War tensions, which had produced arms-control agreements and the Helsinki Accords of 1975. That climate changed sharply when Soviet forces entered Afghanistan.

The invasion and Carter’s ultimatum

On 24–27 December 1979 Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan, killed the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin and installed Babrak Karmal. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan alarmed Western governments, which saw it as a threat to the Persian Gulf region.

President Jimmy Carter responded with a grain embargo and other sanctions. On 20 January 1980 he announced that unless Soviet forces left Afghanistan within a month, the United States would not send a team to Moscow, and called on other nations to join. The deadline of 20 February passed without withdrawal.

Carter’s administration pressed the US Olympic Committee (USOC), which was formally independent of the government, warning that it could lose funding and that athletes might be refused passports. On 12 April 1980 the USOC voted by 1,604 to 797 not to send a team. A group of athletes led by the rower Anita DeFrantz sued, but a federal court ruled against them in May.

Who joined and who did not

The response divided the Western world. West Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Kenya, China, Israel and Argentina were among the countries that stayed away. Several Muslim-majority states, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, also boycotted in protest at the invasion.

In Britain, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher urged a boycott, but the British Olympic Association, like many national committees in Western Europe, decided to go. France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Australia also competed. Around 16 delegations took part in ceremonies under the Olympic flag rather than their national flags, and the Olympic hymn was played at their medal ceremonies.

In the end 80 nations sent athletes, the fewest since the Melbourne Games of 1956. Some countries listed as boycotting stayed away for financial or sporting reasons as well as political ones, so exact counts vary between about 62 and 66.

The Games themselves

The Games opened at the Central Lenin Stadium (now the Luzhniki Stadium) on 19 July 1980. The Soviet Union won 80 gold and 195 medals in total, and East Germany 47 gold. With the American and West German teams absent, many events lacked their strongest competitors.

There were notable performances nonetheless. Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett shared the middle-distance glory, Ovett winning the 800 metres and Coe the 1,500 metres. Allan Wells won the 100 metres and Daley Thompson the decathlon. The Soviet swimmer Vladimir Salnikov became the first man to swim the 1,500 metres freestyle in under 15 minutes, and the gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin won eight medals, then a record for a single Games.

The closing ceremony on 3 August ended with a giant image of Misha shedding a tear, an image that became famous across the Soviet Union.

Consequences

For many athletes, especially in the United States, Japan and West Germany, the boycott ended their only realistic chance of competing at an Olympics. In July 1980 the United States held the Liberty Bell Classic in Philadelphia, an athletics meeting for boycotting nations, sometimes called the “Olympic Boycott Games”, but it was no substitute.

Congress later authorised special Congressional Gold Medals for the 461 members of the 1980 US Olympic team. Many athletes remained bitter that they had been used for a political gesture that did not achieve its aim.

Soviet troops remained in Afghanistan until the withdrawal of 1988–1989. The boycott deepened the renewed Cold War of the early 1980s and set a precedent that the Soviet Union followed on 8 May 1984, when it announced it would not attend the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Most of its allies followed.

The IOC president Lord Killanin, who had tried to keep politics out of the Games, stepped down in 1980 and was succeeded by Juan Antonio Samaranch. The twin boycotts of 1980 and 1984 led the IOC to strengthen rules obliging national committees to participate.

Myths and facts

A common belief is that the whole Western world boycotted Moscow. In fact most Western European countries sent teams, often against their governments’ wishes, and athletes from those countries won many medals. The core of the boycott was the United States, West Germany, Japan, Canada and China, together with many states in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It is also sometimes said that the boycott had no effect at all. It did not achieve a Soviet withdrawal, and it hurt athletes far more than governments. But it embarrassed the Soviet leadership at a moment of great prestige, reduced television audiences in the West and showed that the United States was willing to use symbolic measures against Moscow at the start of a harsher phase of the Cold War.

Finally, the Games did not lack high-quality competition. Dozens of world records were set in Moscow, and the performances of athletes such as Coe, Ovett and Salnikov are still regarded as among the best of the era.

The view from Moscow

Soviet media presented the boycott as an attempt by the United States to wreck a festival of peace and friendship, and they played down its scale. Inside the country preparations continued on a large scale. Many dissidents and other people considered undesirable were moved out of Moscow during the Games, and many children were sent away to summer camps.

The authorities hoped the Olympics would show the world a modern, prosperous socialist capital. Foreign visitors were fewer than expected, partly because of the boycott, but the Games still drew large crowds of Soviet spectators and were broadcast across the Eastern bloc.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 23 October 1974: The IOC awards the 1980 Summer Games to Moscow.
• 24–27 December 1979: Soviet forces invade Afghanistan.
• 20 January 1980: Carter sets a one-month deadline for Soviet withdrawal.
• 20 February 1980: The deadline passes.
• 12 April 1980: The US Olympic Committee votes not to send a team.
• 19 July 1980: The Moscow Games open at the Central Lenin Stadium.
• 3 August 1980: The Games close.
• 8 May 1984: The Soviet Union announces its boycott of the Los Angeles Games.

Why it matters

The 1980 boycott was the largest in Olympic history and showed how deeply the Cold War reached into sport. It failed to force a Soviet withdrawal, triggered a counter-boycott in 1984 and left the Olympic movement determined to prevent such divisions in future.