Olympic Gamesmanship

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Los Angeles News of the Soviet Olympic boycott has been the source of quiet satisfaction here in Los Angeles among those who feared their city was going to be intolerably congested in the summer. A few are even thinking of changing their plans and perhaps spending August in Los Angeles after all. On the other hand, those who were hoping to fleece foreign visitors by renting out their modest homes for $600 a day are mildly concerned lest the property market now turns soft. The rest don't care.

Los Angeles has been able to take the Soviet decision in its stride because it had so little invested in the Olympics. True, a few roads have been repaved and the police department has told its men to behave graciously when the visitors descend 'so that the world will marvel at America', but that is about as far as the city has been prepared to go. Los Angeles long ago refus- ed to take any financial responsibility for the Games and left it to a private corpora- tion to put on the show.

The Los Angeles Olympic Organising Committee (LAO0C) had had to raise the $500 million Olympic budget from ticket sales, television rights, and private sponsor- ship.

It may well be in fianancial trouble because of the boycott but if anybody has to bail it out it will probably be American big business or the federal government, rather than the city of Los Angeles.

So Angelenos are not too upset about the boycott nor are they surprised. While experts in Washington are dismissive of the Soviet grievances, considering the issue of lax security a pretext for a political action, Angelenos are inclined to take the Russians at their word. Unless the Soviet team is kept in cultural quarantine the Russians would indeed be taking a big risk if they sent their youth to Los Angeles. It is quite natural in their view that any Soviet athlete who had once set foot in Southern California should wish to abandon his native Irkutsk and stay to eat lotus on the beach in Malibu.

Los Angeles is agreeable, no doubt, especially for the outdoor types who like fast cars, but in fact Soviet athletes rarely defect. Successful sportsmen are pampered in Russia and naturally find their country a congenial enough place. It tends to be artists and intellectuals who are most un- comfortable in the Soviet Union and who have the independence of mind to try and start a new life in the West.

Nevertheless, a group of tiresome zealots has been planning to ensnare visiting athletes and offer them safe refuge should they wish to defect. This Ban the Soviets Coalition, made up of suburban Americans and East European emigres, has laudable views on human rights but is a spoilsport if ever there was one. And it may also be an enemy of mankind.

`Just so some athletes can have a good time is no reason to ignore human rights,' they say, and they have a point. But they are wrong. They are wrong because human rights are not the only concern of politics and because the Olympic Games are not a playground for athletes. It is ceremony that binds a community and ceremony that binds a nation, but what rituals are there to bind the world? The Olympics are the only global festival. Two and a half billion peo- ple were going to watch these summer games, half the world's population was go- ing to share in a festival of nations. Now it has been sullied. It was sullied before, of course, but even when it had become a con- test between two political systems it was still a festival and a subtle tie of brotherhood. If the boycott finishes off the Olympics once and for all we may have lost more than we realise.

Whether this self-righteous coalition can really take the credit, or the blame, for the Soviet withdrawal is a moot point. The sporting fraternity in California has its own view. The Russians can't come to the Games for the simple reason that they'll get thrashed if they do. They'll be beaten by their allies and they'll be beaten by their foes.

Private sponsors in the United States, stung by the declining performance of their athletes in recent years, have invested heavi- ly in these Olympics and the American team is poised for a come-back this summer. The Soviets, on the other hand, did badly in

The Spectator 19 May 1984 track and field at the Helsinki games Iasi year and some of their team was sent W°m! early for not trying hard enough. And though Russians still dominate

thunder in Los Angeles. the Chinese might well have stolen then

If the Soviets are really boycotting t.;) mask their decline as a sporting Power it is surprising they did not choose a weigh", issue like US foreign policy in Central America as the pretext for withdrawal' With Russian tanks blasting Afghan vi!: ages in the Panjshir Valley all last week.,`I, would have been hard to play that card with gYmnastics, baesetnratighheitrfsatcreo,nbguesttthsueint.hypocrisy has long preTthexetchfoo ricethoef haotyeecohtnticsaulgagnedstsnegotiable that the story may not be over yet. Peter Ueberroth, the President of the Los Angeles OW1'1! Organising Committee, admits that Wet boycott is probably just a tit-for-tat attoth at the Americans but he is still hopeful I"- the Soviets may yet relent. The cluesti°n s' 'what are they hoping to gain from PlaYin,,ge hard to get? Surely they cannot expect t",. FBI to cart all the trouble-makers in the FBI the Soviets Coalition off to detentingt centres in the Nevada desert? One rrihusie presume that the Soviets have an a,,,t diplomatic service which can advise on whoa is, and what is not, acceptable in democratic society. at Perhaps they are having another try ._ fingers i x fixing westernih G erm elections.ahy w hep tThehieryeabduorrnstenit.hee:indt of the Social Democratic candidate helped swing the voters over to the opposition, his maybe they think they can do it better dtiiindae ei Rev. f o r Jesse the DemocraticJackson, th the presidential . nomination, who won his spurs as an to –et. national mediator last Christmas by P to suading President Hassad of Syria ot release a captured American pilot, has 11,4 the Olympics.committee to sa h dirvid aottle ds 4°e: that re the Associated with the rescue team ,,,e Dtweomooctrhaetricprpeasrtidyentivialaictaner Gary Hart, and it is just conceivalw- „ by the Soviets would try to discredit Reaga',ne consenting to drop the boycott upon_i_. intercession of the Democratic leadershIll_e Political pundits in Washington te using ng t h the Olympics that o iftake the aSosvwieitp,.fise a'aitt Reagan, it won't do them any good at blame, was Jimmy Carter who started the ve and it is he who is now taking the blanr And while Carter seems to be falling lower in the esteem of his cou ritrYscill:th" Ronald Reagan has come through un ,evil ed. Indeed, as a tireless critic of the_ the empire' he stands to gain

opinion. Soviet Union outrages American p

viet bait" Ultimately, however well the So inal tile the boycott, it will have only a rnarg-rhe effect on American domestic

every tirricti,lic same cannot be said about EastPe°rnlitiEcusr.°0,-1Pheo.

with the "

East German athletes and officials, s were getting on splendidly

An geles Olympic crew and who were even giving discreet tips on how to deal with the truculent Russians, admit they don't really share the Soviet fears about lax security and are extremely disappointed by the boycott. And as for the Poles, they know how the American people cheered and supported them in the heady days of Solidarity. There s nobody in Los Angeles whipping up `anti-polish hysteria' and there is nobody in warsaw who is going to believe the fatuous grievances of the Polish Olympic Commit- tee. It is just this kind of Russian high- handedness that infuriates Eastern Euro- peans, and one wonders how much political credit the Soviets have used in forcing an Olympic boycott on their satellites. Let us hope they have exhausted that credit and some good may come of this pointless Soviet gesture. At times the most trivial incident is a catalyst of great historical change and perhaps we shall look back to the 1984 Olympics as the moment when the Russian Empire, having lost the respect of its vassal states, at last began to fall apart.