Are the Olympics Still Worth It?
State-sponsored doping scandals, economic albatrosses and nuclear tensions set the stage for the 2018 Olympic Games. So, why are we still doing this again?
Episode 4: ‘Burn Baby Burn, Olympic Inferno’
On this week’s episode of Schtick to Sports, the GSC panel break down some of the major storylines heading into PyeongChang, from Russia’s omission to the continued tensions in the Korean Peninsula.
The transcript has been edited and condensed.
Prologue
Dan Szczepanek: Muhammad Ali fought many men over the course of his career. He fought bigger men, stronger men, faster men, men of the government, men of the law, men of the faith. But there was one group that Ali was never prepared to fight — foreign dignitaries.
After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, President Carter wanted — and most likely needed — a response to prove America's strength. It was an election year for Carter and he was being attacked for his inability to stop the spread of communism. So Carter went big. The day before the State of the Union, he announced that the US and its allies would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, unless the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. Oh, and he only gave the Soviets one month to do this.
Naturally that deadline passed, the Soviets ignored him, and all of a sudden, Carter had a boycott on his hands. So he called up Ali — far from a seasoned diplomat and sent him to Africa to rally support for his boycott. What came next was one of the strangest and most embarrassing diplomatic missions in American history. Ali who considered himself the “black Henry Kissinger failed” to understand what he was doing in Africa. His message wavered, his resolve wavered, and all of a sudden, Ali found himself agreeing more with the nations that opposed the boycott. Ali ended up cutting his trip short, returned to America dejected, and failed to sway anybody in Africa.
But despite Ali's failures the boycott went ahead anyway u.s. athletes stayed out of Moscow Carter lost to Reagan and Ali was retired as a foreign diplomat. But more importantly, the boycott set a new precedent in a way and on a scale that hadn't been seen before. Carter weaponized sports into a tool for diplomacy and forever linked the Olympics with the politics that surround them.
State-sponsored doping scandals, economic albatrosses and nuclear tensions provide the backstory for the 2018 games in Pyeongchang. On today's episode of stick sports we break down these stories look at how they might play out, and ask the question, are the Olympics still worth it?
