Not since the Olympic boycotts of 1976, 1980, and 1984 have the Olympic Games been so politically charged. Indeed, until I researched this article, I wasn’t even aware of the 1976 boycott by African nations due to New Zealand’s rugby team competing with the South African team. However, I was very much aware of the 1980 boycott. While I was just a boy when we led the boycott, due to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, I questioned the wisdom of combining politics with an event whose purpose is to bring people together. The 1980 boycott led to the 1984 boycott by Russia and its contingency. Athletes who had trained for years, sacrificing greatly, were denied the opportunity to compete with the world’s best for a period of almost 12 years. Why? One dirty word, politics. The movie “American Flyers” summed it up best with a quote from a former US cyclist stating, “I spent four years of my life working shitty jobs so I could train and make the Olympic team … and then some fat asses in Washington started having opinions. The Olympic Committee started having opinions. .... So we boycott the Olympics. I was in the best shape of my life in the summer of 1980 and I got beat by opinions.” It is a lesson we apparently did not learn. It is incredibly important that as athletes we do not continue to allow the politicizing of the Olympic Games. We will undermine their very purpose of bringing people together peacefully!

At the heart of politicizing the Games is the ridiculous amount of propaganda spread by the East and the West. The propaganda of the East is well documented and need not be repeated here. Having traveled the world extensively I am always amazed at the Western take on the events I witness abroad. Often the view bares little resemblance to the facts and is created in some part by armchair reporting and the reduction of independent news reporting in the US. It’s exacerbated by Western media’s tendency to sensationalize the news. Once they dig their teeth into a story, their perspective takes on a life of their own. Leading up to the 2004 Athens games, the in vogue focus was to comment that Greece would not be ready for the games. Not only were they ready, but they shined. The analogy used in Athens was that their preparations were like a Greek wedding, starting slow and ending in a fury. Leading up to China we heard countless stories of air quality problems, general pollution, restrictions on freedom of the press, and issues regarding human rights.

Concerned athletes questioned whether they should avoid the games entirely, for fear of risking their health and potentially their future performance athletically. More likely than not, most athletes information came to them second hand. It is unreasonable to assume every athlete would go to China and check the conditions for themselves. When I headed to China a month before the race walks, air quality was the primary concern of the athletes I was in contact with. While the air was hot, humid and with little visibility, I did not sense the undue presence of pollution. When I returned to Beijing weeks later, ready for the race walks, temperatures had abated and the air quality seemed quite reasonable.

When I watched on the news as American athletes came off the plane wearing masks I was disgusted. I could not imagine how the athletes could be so rude. Clearly, they wouldn’t wear the masks in competition, so what did they think they were achieving? When I read the story behind the masks I was even more horrified. Apparently they were chastised to the point of crying by the very Olympic Committee that furnished the masks to the athletes. How naïve and foolish could the committee be to give masks to athletes and not expect at least some of them to wear them in public? Then to rip their athletes for the naivety is a shameful display of deflecting the blame. While the IOC has stated the air quality in Beijing “will not pose any major problem to athletes or visitors…,” some studies show the air quality to have been 60% worse than in LA during the 1984 games. How much worse is 60%? Anecdotally, I felt the air quality was fine. In addition, the US race walkers who came to Beijing they indicated to me the air quality was fine. It certainly didn’t affect the performances of the races with two of the three Olympic Race Walking records being broken and the other missed by only two seconds.

The story continues...