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≡ JIMMY CARTER DIES ≡
Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, passed away at age 100 on Sunday in Plains, Georgia.
He served from 1977-81, rising from a little-known Democratic governor to U.S. President, but had a troubled term, marked by high inflation and the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, and was soundly defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his post-presidential work in promoting peace.
Carter will also be remembered as no friend to the U.S. Olympic Movement.
He did sign the landmark Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which placed the U.S. Olympic Committee (now U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee) in charge of Olympic sport in the country. But he could not be bothered to attend the formal signing of the award of the 1984 Olympic Games to Los Angeles – at The White House – in October 1978, sending White House Cabinet Secretary Jack Watson instead.
Then came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, leading Carter to introduce several sanctions, including a decision that a U.S. team would not participate in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow after a 20 February deadline for the USSR to withdraw was ignored.
In a 21 March 1980 address, he declared:
“The Olympics are important to the Soviet Union. They have made massive investments in buildings, equipment, propaganda. As has probably already been pointed out to you, they have passed out hundreds of thousands of copies of an official Soviet document saying that the decision of the world community to hold the Olympics in Moscow is an acknowledgment of approval of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, and proof to the world that the Soviets’ policy results in international peace.
“I can’t say at this moment what other nations will not go to the Summer Olympics in Moscow. Ours will not go. I say that not with any equivocation; the decision has been made. The American people are convinced that we should not go to the Summer Olympics. The Congress has voted overwhelmingly, almost unanimously, which is a very rare thing, that we will not go. And I can tell you that many of our major allies, particularly those democratic countries who believe in freedom, will not go.
“I understand how you feel, and I thought about it a lot as we approached this moment, when. I would have to stand here in front of fine young Americans and dedicated coaches, who have labored sometimes for more than 10 years, in every instance for years, to become among the finest athletes in the world, knowing what the Olympics mean to you, to know that you would be disappointed. It’s not a pleasant time for me.”
It wasn’t actually up to Carter whether the U.S. went or not; that was up to the United States Olympic Committee. Under enormous pressure from the Carter Administration, the USOC House of Delegates voted by 1,704 to 697 on 12 April not to attend the Games.
The U.S., along with 62 other National Olympic Committees, did not participate in the Games, and that action led to a retaliatory boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games by 14 nations. Moscow 1980 is the only Olympic or Winter Games that the U.S. has not participated in.
On 30 July 1980, Carter hosted the 1980 team at The White House, with the athletes awarded Congressional Gold Medals in lieu of attending the Games. In a remembrance for The Sports Examiner in 2020, the late, then-USOC spokesman Mike Moran described a years-later incident about the boycott:
“[T]he late 1984 Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling gold medalist Jeff Blatnick, who was on that ’80 team, told a story that startles me even now. He was on an airplane, flying from Bismarck, N.D., to Minneapolis and came upon former President Carter, seated in the first-class cabin.
“As soon as the plane gets up in the air and levels off, he gets up and starts saying hi to everybody,” recalls Blatnick. “I say to the person next to me, ‘I wonder how this is going to be.’ He gets to me, I go, ‘President Carter, I have met you before, I am an Olympian.’ 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, I’m sorry.’”
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