THE SHADOW OF WAR The Olympics can never truly escape the wider political landscape with athletes often competing while bombs are dropping elsewhere. Philip Barker tells the story of Games impacted by the ugly head of war.
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ne way or another, war and conflict has cast a longstanding shadow over the modern Olympic Movement. Over the last four decades, military action ordered from the Kremlin has often been the catalyst for crisis. In late December 1979, as sports officials were making their final preparations for the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow, Soviet forces crossed the border into Afghanistan. This action provoked an almost immediate response of condemnation from many Western Governments. “I regard the Soviet invasion and the attempted suppression of Afghanistan as a serious violation of international law and an extremely serious threat to world peace,” said American President
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Jimmy Carter, as he wrote to the United States Olympic Committee. “This invasion also endangers neighbouring independent countries and access to a major part of the world’s oil supplies. It therefore threatens our own national security, as well as the security of the region and the entire world. “If Soviet troops do not fully withdraw from Afghanistan within the next month, Moscow will become an unsuitable site for a festival meant to celebrate peace and goodwill.” By a strange twist of fate, the 1980 Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid in the US. Carter did not attend, but sent vice-president Walter Mondale to open the Games.
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