While catching my breath between shovelfuls of snow, this past storm, I had a conversation with a neighbour. She told me about her son was now studying at Dalhousie University and training in an elite swimming program. Naturally, she was proud of his accomplishments. She told me he currently ranks among the top swimmers in the country in the backstroke. In fact, in April he’ll compete in Montreal at an Olympic qualifying event in hopes of going for a medal in Beijing or beyond.
Then, I noticed the news from Tibet. Chinese authorities had cracked down on human rights demonstrators there. And the angry reaction of people, such as Australian senator Andrew Bartlett, could conceivably sink the Olympic dreams of my neighour’s son.
“I think we should boycott the Olympics,” Bartlett told reporters this week. “We can’t just turn a blind eye because we all love our sport.”
The Australian politician isn’t the only one calling on Olympic athletes and entire nations to pull out of this summer’s Games in Beijing. Last weekend, Tibetan sources claimed Chinese troops had killed as many as 80 demonstrators; in response, American actor Richard Gere claimed Chinese military police had driven Tibetans to “the edge of extinction” and he endorsed an Olympic boycott. Meanwhile, in the streets of New York, thousands of other sympathizers called on western nations to rethink their participation in the 2008 Games.
As well this week, 27 members of the European Union gathered in Slovenia to consider staying away from the Games. In particular, Christian Obergfoell, a javelin thrower and spokesman for German Olympians, spoke in favour of a boycott; he said he’d been asking himself, “why they gave the Olympics to China in the first place.” Not surprisingly, the Dalai Lama, in exile over China’s takeover of Tibet in 1951, announced that the Beijing Olympics offered the international community “a golden opportunity to reprimand China.”
Well and good. But amid the outrage against China, I could almost hear another generation of Canadian Olympic athletes lamenting, “Here we go again.” It was 1979, almost 30 years ago. The Olympic torch had travelled from Mt. Olympus across Europe to the steppes of Russia and Lord Killanin, the president of the International Olympic Committee, prepared to welcome the world to Moscow for the 1980 Games. Suddenly, the Russian Army invaded Afghanistan and an outraged U.S. Congress advocated retaliation: a boycott of the Moscow Olympics.
Sixty-five nations – including Canada – joined the U.S.-led boycott. And hundreds of lifelong athletic dreams were snuffed out faster than an Olympic flame on the Games’ final day.
Among them, the aspirations of a dear friend of mine. In 1979, Diane Jones Konihowski, a multi-event athlete from Saskatchewan, was peaking. First in high-school track and field days during the ’50s, then at national competitions, such as the Canada Games in the ’60s, the pentathlete showed great promise.
At the 1976 Montreal Olympics, “carrying the weight of the home side on her shoulders,” she didn’t perform her best. Her sights set on the 1980 games and fully adapted to the changing nature of her event (now the heptathlon), Jonesy put aside everything – her education, her career and her family – to train ‘round the clock and bring home gold for Canada.
Then, in April 1980, Prime Minister Joe Clark announced Canada would follow the American lead and boycott the Moscow Olympics. Canada’s “golden girl” was devastated, enraged and confused. Everything Jonesy had worked for – athletic excellence, national pride and personal best performances – suddenly didn’t matter. Her country was striking a political blow against “the evil empire” with the only weapon at its disposal, the prowess of its Olympic youth. And Jonesy had no say in it. She even attempted to forfeit her Canadian citizenship to compete in Moscow as a citizen of the world. Her funding was withdrawn. She was stuck here with no means to get there. Hardly anyone noticed her Olympic dream die.
So what do boycotts accomplish? When China boycotted the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, the status of Taiwan didn’t change. The African boycott of the ’76 Games in Montreal didn’t undermine apartheid in South Africa. The Russians didn’t leave Afghanistan because Canada boycotted the ’80 Moscow Olympics (look who’s in Afghanistan now). And North Korea’s boycott of the Seoul Olympics in ’88 was hardly noticed.
I didn’t have the heart to raise any of this with my neighbour last week. It merely crossed my mind as she brimmed with pride at her son’s talent in the Olympic-sized swimming pools of university competition.
Like war on the battlefield, politics in the Olympic stadium mostly cripples the young.
