The Olympics

The Winter Olympics are now in progress and I'm loving it.  Being an athlete--an UltraRunner--enables me, in some small way and at least on some level, to better understand the motivations and training requirements to be at the top of one's game.

Which brings me back to President Carter's boycott of the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow. 

The 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan spurred United States President Jimmy Carter to issue an ultimatum that the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympics if Soviet troops did not withdraw from the country...

At the time I strongly disagreed with this move, thinking that trying to use sports as a moral bludgeon was not only stupid but futile.  Although I was (and am) a strong Carter supporter, when he went ahead anyway with the boycott, I was bitterly disappointed.  The Soviets in turn boycotted the 1984 Oylmpics in Los Angeles.

I wonder if the Games were held in the U.S. again while we remain in Afghanistan whether there would be any serious discussion or action about a boycott based upon our ongoing "intervention" there.  We did host the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in Feb 2002, but perhaps with 9/11 so fresh and our invasion of Afghanistan pretty much accepted as justified at that time, I don't recall any discussion then whether nations elsewhere in the world might consider a boycott.