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XXII Olympiad: Moscow 1980, Sarajevo 1984
XXII Olympiad: Moscow 1980, Sarajevo 1984
XXII Olympiad: Moscow 1980, Sarajevo 1984
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XXII Olympiad: Moscow 1980, Sarajevo 1984

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The Olympics are meant to be a celebration of sportsmanship and fellowship among nations, but they have sometimes fell short of that goal. XXII Olympiad, the twentieth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins with the story of one of the most politicized Games ever held: Moscow 1980.

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, prompting the United States to lead a 65-nation boycott of the Moscow Games. In spite of the absence of many of the world’s great athletes, Moscow still produced legendary Olympic champions, like the great Cuban heavyweight Teofilo Stevenson, who became the first boxer to win three consecutive gold medals; and the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who added two golds and two silvers in Moscow to take her personal medal total to 12. The absence of many top athletes also opened the door for others to make history, like sprinter Allan Wells, who won the first gold medal in the 100 metres for Great Britain since 1924.

The book then turns its focus to the 1984 Winter Games of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. It profiles the most dominant athlete of those Games, Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi of Finland, who won all three individual golds in cross-country skiing. Sarajevo also saw the British ice dancing pair Torvil and Dean post perfect scores for artistic impression in their gold-medal performance, a feat never duplicated; as well as the participation of the first black African Olympic skier, Lamine Gueye of Senegal.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, former President of the International Olympic Committee, called The Olympic Century, “The most comprehensive history of the Olympic games ever published”.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 18, 2015
ISBN9781987944198
XXII Olympiad: Moscow 1980, Sarajevo 1984

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    Book preview

    XXII Olympiad - Roberta Conlon

    THE OLYMPIC CENTURY

    THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MODERN OLYMPIC MOVEMENT

    VOLUME 20

    THE

    XXII OLYMPIAD

    MOSCOW 1980

    SARAJEVO 1984

    by Roberta Conlan

    W

    Warwick Press Inc.

    Toronto

    Copyright © 1996 WSRP

    The Olympic Century series was produced as a joint effort among the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and World Sport Research & Publications, to provide an official continuity series that will serve as a permanent on-line Olympic education program for individuals, schools, and public libraries.

    Published by:

    Warwick Press Inc., Toronto

    www.olympicbooks.com

    1st Century Project: Charles Gary Allison

    Publishers: Robert G. Rossi, Jim Williamson, Rona Wooley

    Editors: Christian D. Kinney, Laura Forman

    Art Director: Christopher M. Register

    Picture Editors: Lisa Bruno, Debora Lemmons

    Digital Imaging: Richard P. Majeske

    Associate Editor, Research: Mark Brewin

    Associate Editor, Appendix: Elsa Ramirez

    Designers: Kimberley Davison, Diane Myers, Chris Conlee

    Staff Researchers: Brad Haynes, Alexandra Hesse, Pauline Ploquin

    Copy Editor: Harry Endrulat

    Venue Map Artist: Dave Hader, Studio Conceptions, Toronto

    Fact Verification: Carl and Liselott Diem Archives of the German Sport University at Cologne, Germany

    Statistics: Bill Mallon, Walter Teutenberg

    Memorabilia Consultants: Manfred Bergman, James D. Greensfelder, John P. Kelly, James B. Lally, Ingrid O’Neil

    Office Staff: Diana Fakiola, Brian M. Heath, Edward J. Messier, Brian P. Rand, Robert S. Vassallo, Chris Waters

    Senior Consultant: Dr. Dietrich Quanz (Germany)

    Special Consultants: Walter Borgers, Dr. Karl Lennartz, Dr. Dietrich Quanz, Dr. Norbert Mueller (Germany), Ian Buchanan (United Kingdom), Wolf Lyberg (Sweden), Dr. Nicholas Yalouris (Greece).

    International Contributors: Jean Durry (France), Dr. Fernand Landry (Canada), Dr. Antonio Lombardo (Italy), Dr. John A. MacAloon (U.S.A.), Dr. Jujiro Narita (Japan), C. Robert Paul (U.S.A.), Dr. Roland Renson (Belgium), Anthony Th. Bijkirk (Netherlands), Dr. James Walston (Ombudsman)

    International Research and Assistance: John S. Baick (New York), Matthieu Brocart (Paris), Alexander Fakiolas (Athens), Bob Miyakawa (Tokyo), Rona Lester (London), Dominic LoTempio (Columbia), George Kostas Mazareas (Boston), Georgia McDonald (Colorado Springs), Wendy Nolan (Princeton), Alexander Ratner (Moscow), Jon Simon (Washington, D.C.), Frank Strasser (Cologne), Valéry Turco (Lausanne), Laura Walden (Rome), Jorge Zocchi (Mexico City)

    All rights reserved. No part of The Olympic Century book series may be copied, republished, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior written consent of the IOC, the USOC, and WSRP.

    eBook Conversion: eBook Partnership, United Kingdom

    ISBN 978-1-987944-24-2 (24 Volume Series)

    ISBN 987-1-987944-19-8 (Volume 20)

    CONTENTS

    I

    BOYCOTT

    II

    THEY CAME THE CONQUERED

    III

    A QUIET REVOLUTION

    IV

    BALKAN BATTLES

    Appendix

    Acknowledgments

    Photo Credits

    Bibliography

    Index

    PROTEST MARCH

    MOSCOW 1980

    It has become traditional for every Game’s organizing committee to create an opening ceremony that reflects the culture of the host nation, while also paying homage to ancient Greece and bowing to modem Olympic protocol. The Moscow celebration had all of that, plus some very deliberate reflections of Cold War politics. The continuity with ancient Greece came at the beginning of the ceremony when a group of costumed charioteers galloped into the stadium. The drivers led their horses on a spirited lap around the track, then moved in position to lead the Greek delegation, which entered the stadium to start the march of athletes. There was nothing unusual about the Greek athletic delegation, but there was no mistaking that this Parade of Nations was a far cry from the norm. It was much smaller than at previous Games since 65 countries were boycotting the event, most obviously West Germany, Japan, and the United States. And some of the participants, like Great Britain and New Zealand, showed their solidarity with the absentees by all too obvious demonstrations. The British team didn’t appear at all--only a placard bearer marched in the athletes’ place. The Kiwis walked behind a black flag emblazoned with the symbol of the New Zealand Olympic Association rather than the national standard.

    Protests notwithstanding, the Soviets were still prepared to put on a show. A cast of thousands of gymnasts formed a sun on the infield, followed by a parade of youths in folkloric outfits of the peoples of the 15 Soviet republics. These gave way to more gymnasts, who formed themselves into five multi-tiered Olympic rings.

    The grand finale was a picture stunt carried out by organized spectators sitting in the east end of the stadium. Using a combination of different colored shirts, hats, and cards, a series of grandstand-sized images were formed, creating a tableau of Soviet history. It was a thrilling finish that received a standing ovation and inspired all who watched and, no doubt, would have impressed a world audience, except for the fact that much of the world had chosen not to watch.

    BOYCOTT

    On the evening of December 27, 1979, the inhabitants of Kabul, Afghanistan, felt the ground tremble not from an earthquake but from the thundering passage of armored tanks. Soon the tremors were punctuated by the roar of mortar and artillery fire as the tanks joined in a coordinated attack on key government sites. The communications center and the presidential place were immediate targets. Gunfights erupted in several parts of the capital. The next day, the official Kabul radio announced that Afghan president Hafizullah Amin had been deposed and executed for crimes against the state. It was the third such presidential execution since April 1978, when Marxists, backed by the Soviet Union, had taken over the government in Kabul. Western news media reported that Afghanistan’s northern neighbor apparently was behind the latest coup as well. In the two days before Amin was overthrown, the Soviets had conducted an around-the-clock airlift, increasing combat forces on the ground in Kabul from 1,500 to about 6,000. At the same time, Soviet strength at the Afghan border, already at the divisions, had ballooned to five a total of about 50,000 troops. Newly installed as president of Afghanistan was Babrak Karmal, a former deputy premier who had been living in exile in Eastern Europe and who seemed to have arrived on the heels of the Soviet army.

    In the United States, President Jimmy Carter condemned the Russian military intervention as a blatant violation of international rules of behavior and a grave threat to peace. Moscow declared that it was only responding to an urgent request for help from a friendly government language, Western analysts noted, that was strikingly similar to Soviet declarations when Russian tanks had rolled into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. True, Kabul had been struggling ever since the Marxist takeover to quell nearly a dozen rebel groups throughout the country, most of them Muslim tribesmen who perceived the regime to be anti-Islamic. But while the insurgency was a matter of some concern to the USSR, it may also have been a convenient excuse to gain access to the Persian Gulf.

    Below: Afghanistan Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin (far right) initiated a reign of tenor in 1979 to solidity his power base in his country. His actions alarmed Soviet leaders, who viewed neighboring Afghanistan as a strategic ally in the Cold War with the United States. Claiming they were invited for security reasons, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December of that year, assassinated Amin, and installed Babrak Karmal (right) in his place.

    In early November, Moscow apparently had expected Washington to take military action against Iran, where 52 Americans were being held hostage in Tehran. Anxious to be strategically located in the event of a U.S. strike, the Soviets quickly moved troops to their border with Afghanistan. They also asked then-President Amin for the exclusive use of an air base in west-em Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. Amin wouldn’t agree to the air base, nor would he agree to invite the Soviets to help put down the internal rebellion in his own country. As weeks passed and the United States still took no military action against Iran, the Soviet troops were caught in mountainous country with winter fast approaching. The USSR needed to shift those forces south before snow closed the passes. The December coup gave the Kremlin a more compliant ally. In his first speech, Karmal welcomed Soviet military aid. By January 1, 1980-less than seven months before Moscow was due to host the Summer Games of the XXII Olympiad-some 50,000 Soviet troops had crossed into Afghanistan, fanning out with helicopters, tanks, and the full array of modem warfare against a primitively armed foe.

    Below: The loudest voice against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was American president Jimmy Carter, who implemented a grain embargo against the Soviets and threatened a boycott of the upcoming 1980 Olympic Games.

    The United States and its western allies responded with strong words and economic sanctions. On January 4, President Carter announced, among other things, a partial embargo on grain, restrictions on the sale of high technology equipment, and curtailment of fishing privileges in U.S. waters. Then, aiming directly at Soviet pride, Carter warned the USSR that its continued aggression will endanger both the participation of athletes and the travel to Moscow by spectators who would normally wish to attend the Olympic Games. Two days later, Saudi Arabia protested the Soviet attack on a Muslim nation by becoming the first country to withdraw from the Moscow Games.

    The boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow would sorely test the Olympic movement, triggering a bitter world-wide debate within nations and within the international athletic community. President Carter would bring all the power of his office to bear both on the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to withhold American participation at Moscow and on other world leaders to join in the boycott. He would be only partly successful. American athletes would, in fact, stay home-the first time in the history of the modern Games that the United States did not take part. However, not all of America’s Western allies would follow Carter’s lead. Ultimately, 65 nations would stay away-including the U.S., Canada, China, Japan, Kenya, and West Germany-but 81 nations would send at least partial teams.

    Of the participating countries, 16 would make symbolic protests against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Some would not march in the opening parade; others would fly the Olympic banner in place of their national flag during medal ceremonies. These inconvenient blots on Moscow’s day in the sun would pass unnoticed by television viewers in the Soviet Union, thanks to adroit camera work and judicious editing. Soviet commentators would blame the inescapable absence of U.S. athletes on the American president’s bid for reelection in this election year and on the supposed U.S. fear of the strong Soviet Olympic team. Elsewhere in the world, networks cancelled or drastically reduced the usual glut of Olympic coverage. NBC’s planned 152 ½hours of coverage would shrink to a few minutes on the nightly news, with longer segments during weekend sports shows. British, Japanese, and German networks would carry a mere 40 hours or less over the two-week span. Ordinarily rabid Olympic fans in these nations would be left: with an odd kind of amnesia about Moscow 1980. What coverage there was would reveal a Games with little of the Olympics’ characteristic exuberance. Joyful victory laps or other signs of spontaneous celebration would be strictly forbidden by security-conscious host officials on the grounds that such demonstrations would provoke spectators.

    Below: French protesters (right) carry a banner voicing Support for the Afghanistan people during a June 1980 demonstration in Paris, France. There was a great deal of support for an Olympic boycott throughout Western Europe as demonstrated by a poster (below) that employed Olympic symbols of the Moscow Games.

    Spectators and competitors would feel the impact of the boycott differently, depending on the sport. The caliber of competition in volleyball, field hockey, rowing, and equestrian events would suffer from below-par entries. Weightlifting and wrestling, by contrast, would scarcely notice the missing athletes. In other events the competition would prove markedly one-sided. In boxing, for example, where Americans would have been strong contenders, Cuba would take five of 11 possible gold medals, and without the tough competition of Japanese gymnasts, Aleksandr Dityatin of the Soviet Union would go home with three golds, four silvers, and one bronze-the most medals won by an individual in one Games in the history of the modern Olympics and more medals than 66 national teams. Perhaps the greatest effect of the boycott would be felt in swimming-an American stronghold-which would instead turn into a dual meet between East Germany and the Soviet Union. Between them, the two countries would take home two-thirds of the swimming medals, including 20 of 26 gold.

    It was peculiar to see countries that normally did not fare well in certain sports suddenly become prolific medal winners. Odder still was the fact that not a single athlete at the Games would fail a drug test-this despite the number of athletes that would improve their personal bests by amazing margins, and the fact that there were 11 drug disqualifications in 1976 and the 12 that would subsequently occur in 1984. It would appear that the Soviet testers were either incompetent or deliberately lax.

    Questionable Soviet officiating in track and field, diving, and gymnastics would cast a shadow over some medal wins, and the ceaseless harassment of foreign athletes by the Soviet crowd would leave visitors appalled. Yet world records in 36 events-just two shy of the 38 set at Montreal in 1976-would attest to memorable athletic achievements.

    To the athletes who were forced to stay away, Moscow 1980 would be memorable for all the wrong reasons. For too many of them, those lost Games were a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Twenty-one-year-old American swimmer Rowdy Gaines, who held world records in the 100- and 200-meter freestyles, summed up their loss: Most swimmers peak at 21 or 22. In 1984, I’ll be too old. Gaines would be lucky enough to stay at the top of the swimming world for another four years and win gold at Los Angeles 1984, but even those, like Gaines, who would manage to make their national teams four years later, would ironically be on the other side of an Olympic boycott. In 1984 (with the Soviets still mired in Afghanistan), the Eastern bloc would opt out of the Games in Los Angeles-denying yet another generation of the world’s best athletes the chance to compete against one another in what was meant to be a setting of international peace and friendship.

    Moscow 1980 was supposed to be a grand coming out party, the ultimate recognition of the legitimacy of the Soviet Union. After a decade of trying, the USSR finally had won the nod from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at its meeting in Vienna in October 1974. Only two cities were in contention: Moscow and Los Angeles. Four years earlier, both had made a run for the 1976 Games, which went to Montreal instead. This time Los Angeles’s presentation before the IOC was markedly low-key. Some people speculated that former president Richard Nixon, who had visited Moscow in June, had essentially promised his old friend Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet premier, that the U.S. would not stand in Moscow’s way. Whether the subject had even come up during the Nixon-Brezhnev meeting is unknown, but IOC President Lord Killanin later noted rather testily that there was little the two leaders could have done to influence the vote even if they’d wanted to. According to IOC tradition, since Montreal was hosting the Games in 1976, members of the IOC would be unlikely to award consecutive Games to North American cities. Los Angeles would have to wait its turn.

    Below: Nion-spired domes of the Cathedral of the Assumption loom over the grounds of the Kremlin. The first structure in the Kremlin, dating from the 12th century; was a hunting lodge fur a local prince. Over the next 300 years, the Kremlin grew into a walled city with some of the most majestic buildings in all of Russia.

    In any case, why shouldn’t the Soviet Union be elected to host this grandest of all sporting events? Tsarist Russia had been one of the dozen countries in 1894 that had resolved to revive the Olympic Games, and Russian general Alexei Butovsky had been among the founding members of the IOC. Although the Bolshevik revolution interrupted this bourgeois pastime for some 30 years, the Soviets returned in the heady days after victory in World War ll. They sent officials as observers to the 1948 Games in London and three years later formed a national Olympic committee. Since the spectacular reemergence of their athletes at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, the Soviets had won the most medals at every Games-save Mexico City 1968-yet another reason they felt they deserved to play host.

    All along, Soviet petitioners to the IOC sought the Games for the Hero-City of Moscow. Since its founding in 1147, Moscow has repeatedly risen, phoenix like, from near-total destruction-whether by Russia’s ancient enemy the Mongol Tatars, who sacked Moscow several times in the 13th and 14th centuries; by fire, as during Napoleon’s brief occupation of the city in the bitter winter of 1812; or by Nazi bombardment during World War ll. Each time, Moscow’s stubborn survivors rebuilt and refortified. Situated in the broad, shallow valley of the Moskva River, in the heart of European Russia, the city stands about 115 feet (3 5 meters) above a narrow floodplain. Most of it is built on the highest of three terraces that the winding river etched into the thick mantle of clay, sand, and gravel left behind by retreating Pleistocene glaciers. Today, a view from the air shows the rough triangle of the Kremlin encircled by a pattern of concentric ring roads that trace the lines of successive fortifications at ever greater distances from the city center. Other thoroughfares radiate from the Kremlin like spokes in a wheel, with the Moskva snaking its way through the city from northwest to southeast.

    Below: St. Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow’s landmark structure, was built to commemorate Ivan the Terrible’s victory over the Tartar Khans in 1552 and has symbolized Russian independence for nearly four centuries.

    According to an old saying, Moscow is downhill from all the Russia’s-meaning, the good things in life tend to flow there first. By the mid- 1970s, Moscow was not only the country’s biggest shopping center but also the nation’s center for scientific research, music, and Russian history and culture. Some 300,000 shoppers a day passed through the famous GUM department store that occupies one side of Red Square, and more than 5,000 smaller shops lined popular old Moscow shopping streets such as Petrovka, Stoleshnikov, Gorky, and Arbat. The city boasted farmers markets, and shops with names like Sofia, Praha, Havana, Leipzig, and The Ganges, specializing in goods from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, East Germany, and India. The Soviets, determined to lead the world in science, generously funded institutions for basic and applied research, most of which have their headquarters in Moscow. In the 1950s, when Moscow University, grande dame of the city’s many institutions of learning and research, outgrew its old buildings, the state built a new 790-foot skyscraper for it across the river on Lenin Hills, a steep bluff with panoramic views of the capital. (This tower is the tallest of seven constructed near the end of Joseph Stalin’s reign, which ring the city center and are commonly held as the most distinctive feature of the Moscow skyline.) With music institutions like the Bolshoi Theater, the city preserves the historic Russian opera and ballet, counting among its treasures the works of composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Writers who either were born or lived for a time in Moscow-Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoyevksy, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Tolstoy-all served to make Moscow the hub of the nation’s literary life.

    Below: The stereotypical lines for goods are nowhere in sight as shoppers fill the hallways of Gosudarstvenny Universalny Magazin, better known as GUM, or State Department Store, in Moscow. Located in Red Square, the Western-style retail building housed 150 shops that sold everything from clothing to appliances.

    In addition to its impressive historical and cultural credentials, Moscow could point to a long history of supporting athletic endeavors as well. After the October Revolution, the state made athletics a feature of the educational curriculum and in 1928 Moscow welcomed athletes from 14 nations to the first USSR Spartakiade, held in the brand-new Dynamo Stadium. By the mid-1970s, the city’s sports infrastructure was extensive enough to stage large sports events on the scale of the Olympic Games.

    When Moscow lost the Olympic bid in 1970, the city’s organizing committee, with true Muscovite determination, simply regrouped to try again. The Soviets spent billions of rubles to bring international sports officials and journalists to see the country’s spanking-new sporting venues and experience lavish Soviet hospitality. At the 1974 IOC Session in Vienna, where the IOC gathered to vote on the 1980 Games host city, Moscow’s presentation left nothing to chance. Reams of paper described the city’s preparations in minute detail, and the Soviet presenters came bearing elaborate scale models of the various stadiums, and the courses in which events like the marathons and cycling road race would take place. They promised, moreover, a Festival of Culture to top anything ever seen at an Olympic Games before. Every night, starting more than a year before the Games, there would be plays, ballets, operas, folk dancing, poetry readings in every available theater and park. Lord Killanin said later that the final decision was made purely in recognition of Moscow’s facilities and its ability to carry off the Games. Given the generally conservative nature of the IOC, he pointed out; awarding the Games to the Socialist capital was obviously not a decision that was made on ideological or political grounds.

    Below: Dancers perform at a ballet recital during the Games. There were 144 opera and ballet performances staged at theaters throughout Moscow.

    Below:

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