
The Olympics are about bringing everyone together through sports, but politics loves to interfere. In previous years, wars, invasions, as well as scandals have resulted in some countries withdrawing from the Games. One of the most spectacular cases was in 1980, when over 60 nations, including the organizer of the Games, the United States of America, led by former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on January 1, 2025, boycotted the Olympiad in protest against the intervention of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This left hundreds of athletes, including track and field stars, with shattered dreams.
The boycott was massive, with countries like Canada, Japan, Israel, and China refusing to compete. Meanwhile, Afghanistan, whose country had just been invaded, sent its athletes to the Games. Some nations allowed their athletes to compete under the Olympic flag, but American athletes faced the harsh reality of losing their passports if they went. Just imagine the disappointment of those athletes who trained hard to represent their countries but were denied an opportunity to do so. And the feeling still remains sore today with one track and field athlete opening up about how that lost chance still haunts them.
Track and field legend reveals the regret
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
It was in 1980 when the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Olympics in a show of protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At that time, Edwin Moses was in his most productive years. He had already achieved the feat of winning gold in the 400-meter hurdles in both 1976 and 1984, and by then he was in the middle of an unimaginable run of 122 consecutive victories. He was expected to repeat his feat in Moscow, but the politics of the Cold War denied him and more than 200 other athletes a chance to compete. Had Moses raced and won, he would have usurped the record for most Olympic golds in the 400-meter hurdles, but instead of competing, Moses and his fellow athletes were left on the bench.
In the beginning, Moses supported President Jimmy Carter, who decided to boycott, but as time went on, the feeling of frustration emerged. “We were not allowed to go for a not-so-clear reason,” he said. This was done with the full support of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and it made some measure of sense at the time. But in real life, it turned out to be a classic example of how the politicization of sports is counterproductive.
The Soviet Union remained unmoved; they continued to remain in Afghanistan right till 1989. As a reply to this suspension, 118 Soviets, along with 13 other Eastern Bloc countries, boycotted the Olympic Games being held in 1984 in Los Angeles, thus making the Games a center for manifestation of world political crises. Decades later, Moses still carries the weight of that lost opportunity.

ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
“I don’t think that the [1980] Olympic team ever got the recognition that it deserved and was never thanked for making a sacrifice that no one has really been asked to make,” he said. That is why the successful boycott in 1980 stays in memory as an example of how politics can come to the foreground at the expense of athletes’ desires. While today the Olympics are still in the pocket of the same political split. Even Moses regrets this wish as he continues to think that if only the Games kept to their purpose, then the sport would have remained free from politics. But do you know, to date, how many times the Olympics were boycotted?
Major Olympic boycotts in history
Except for the Moscow Olympics of 1980, the Olympics have been boycotted five times. Similarly, politics affected the organization of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Due to the Soviet invasion of Hungary during the uprising, three nations, namely the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland, refused to participate, and so did China to Taiwan. Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon also did not go out due to the Suez Canal Crisis.
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
There are also other boycotts, such as the 1964 Tokyo Games, when China, North Korea, and Indonesia decided to pull out after the IOC said that the athletes who would compete in the 1963 Jakarta Games, an alternative event, would be barred. During the 1976 Montreal Olympics, more than twenty African nations, among them Kenya, did not participate after the New Zealand rugby team toured apartheid South Africa. Taiwan also declined to attend any of those. The Soviet team and thirteen other nations from the Eastern Bloc boycotted the 1984 Olympics conducted in Los Angeles, expecting demonstrations against the Soviet Union.
Thus, the Games went on without seeming political interferences; still, the U.S. athletes secured as many gold medals as ever before. Historically, the 1988 Games were the last of the Cold War and featured boycotts from four nations, including Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and North Korea, but it was a great game with the highest level of participants ever recorded.