COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - It was a decision that robbed hundreds of athletes of their once-in-a-lifetime chance at Olympic glory, and for more than four decades, it weighed heavily on the man who made it - Jimmy Carter.
Carter´s passing Sunday has unearthed memories from his 1977-1981 presidency. Somewhere between his greatest foreign-policy success (the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt) and his greatest failure (the Iran hostage crisis) sits the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
It was Carter who called for that boycott - a Cold War power play intended to express America´s disdain for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter said the invasion "could pose the most serious threat to world peace since the second World War."
The boycott garnered more than two-thirds support from the 2,400 members of the unwieldy U.S. Olympic Committee house of delegates, the governing body that made the official move to keep the athletes out of Moscow. In short time, that move came to be seen as the textbook example of the risks, confusion and low success rate of injecting politics into sports.
"We were not allowed to go for a not-so-clear reason," said Edwin Moses, the hurdling great who won 122 straight races between 1977 and 1987, which included the Olympic gold-medal contests in 1976 and 1984.
For decades, members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team - recognized as Olympians at home but not by the International Olympic Committee abroad - told stories about opportunities missed and dreams unfulfilled because of the trip to Moscow they never took. Of the 474 athletes who had qualified for the team in 1980, 227 would not get another chance to compete in the Olympic Games.
Many athletes told stories of meeting Carter at a White House visit in the summer of 1980 that served as a tepid substitute. In Washington, the athletes received the highest honor civilians can receive from Congress: the Congressional gold medal. But those medals were only gold-plated bronze, not pure gold, and they weren´t recorded in the Congressional record until a push was made nearly three decades later.
Swimmer Jesse Vassallo, a reigning world champion in multiple events at the time, told Swimming World Magazine about meeting Carter in the reception line.
Carter "reached out to shake my hand and he said 'How would you have done in Moscow?´" Vassallo recalled. "And I said, 'I would have won two golds and a silver.´ And he just gave me this (pained) look. He didn´t ask anybody else that question."
Wrestler Jeff Blatnick, a champion on the 1984 Olympic team, met Carter on an airplane years later. According to an essay written by the late USOC spokesman Mike Moran, Blatnick said: "He looks at me and says, 'Were you on the 1980 hockey team?´ I say, 'No sir, I´m a wrestler, on the summer team.´ He says, 'Oh, that was a bad decision,