By John Bagratuni Oct 21, 2009, 5:09 GMT
Hamburg - The International Olympic Committee is non-political by definition, but it was helpless when the Olympics were misused for Cold War politics.
In 1984, 14 countries led by the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Games that year, officially over security concerns.
But the real motive of the Kremlin leadership and its allies was retaliation as the United States had led a boycott of more than 60 nations 1980 in Moscow over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Olympic history has seen various boycotts and exclusions, but then IOC boss Sigfrid Edstrom said in 1952 that a new dimension was reached 'after the inclusion of the Soviet Union politicised the Olympic Movement.'
Some countries stayed away from the 1956 Games in protest of the Soviet's crackdown on the Hungarian uprising, but most remembered in the ideological war of the superpowers were the boycotts from 1980 and 1984.
Shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan started on December 27, 1979, US president Jimmy Carter tried in vain to make the IOC move the Moscow Games - the first in a communist country - elsewhere.
The boycott was the second option and Carter's administration called for solidarity among its allies. The US Olympic Committee voted during the Lake Placid Winter Games not to send athletes to Moscow and in total 64 governments joined the boycott.
However, in more than a dozen countries, including Britain, France and Italy, the governments left the final decision up to the athletes, who did compete in large numbers at the world's highest sports stage.
The backlash four years later in Los Angeles was predictable, but this time not all the Soviet allies complied with Romania sending a team after all.
Also present was Yugoslavia and Communist China even made it its Olympic debut at the 1984 Games.
All nations were present from 1888 onwards in Seoul and restraint also prevailed ahead of the Beijing Games despite the Tibet issue and other human rights concerns around hosts China.
'Put together a ranking of the worst ideas ever conceived and 'Olympic boycott' would be at the top of that list,' said Darryl Seibel, spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee, in 2008.
'Other than unnecessarily and unfairly punishing athletes, Olympic boycotts accomplish absolutely nothing.'
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