Moscow – 1980

One of the hardest things to do in sport in the U.S. is make an Olympic team.  Its difficulty percentage runs consistently with the ascension of good college players to the NFL, NBA, or Major League Baseball.

Add to that the fact that the Olympics only take place once in a four year period and you get an idea of how devastating the U.S. lead “Olympic Boycott” was to the young, aspiring athletes of our great nation.

President Jimmy Carter had surrounded himself with advisors who knew little of how foreign policy would work with the Soviet Union when we threatened to embarrass them with withholding the participation of ours and many other Western nations to their 16 day extravaganza of international sport.  Those advisors thought the threat would force the Soviets to withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan which they had invaded just after the first of the year.

Of course the “Big Bear” didn’t blink and we now know how long they remained in Afghanistan before having to finally withdraw in disgrace after nearly a decade of no progress and political upheaval as a result.

President Carter had committed himself and our nation so completely to the “boycott gambit” that he couldn’t possibly back down.  There wasn’t the slightest consideration for the great athletes who were going to have their Olympic dreams shattered, never to be realized because of this political folly.

Countless gymnasts and swimmers who, especially in those days, were often chronologically predisposed to only having a shot at one Games by accident of when they were born.  The name that comes to me most readily, of those who truly suffered from that boycott is the great gymnast Kurt Thomas.  He had certainly positioned himself to become the first American gymnast in the “modern era” to dominate the Olympic competition after becoming the all-around world champion the previous year.

As soon as I heard the boycott announced in mid-January, I knew we wouldn’t be going.  I was 26 and probably in my athletic prime.  I was philosophical at the time because I had already had the experience twice and my event was catching fire.

I thought it was the end of my athletic career but the next Olympics would be in Los Angeles and I was learning that four years went by quicker than it used to.