Should the Torch Be Passed?

The President first brought up the matter in his television address decrying the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the threat was unmistakable. "Although the United States would prefer not to withdraw from the Olympic Games scheduled in Moscow this summer," said Jimmy Carter, "the Soviet Union must realize that its continued aggressive actions will endanger both the participation of athletes and the travel to Moscow by spectators who would normally wish to attend the Olympic Games."

That warning of a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games was followed last week by a potentially even more humiliating suggestion from Vice President Walter Mondale. Said he: "It is my personal belief that the Olympics ought to be held somewhere else." Rosalynn Carter, campaigning in Iowa, also said the Olympic site should be changed, and at week's end the State Department said American participation in the Olympics was "an open question."

Thus was the Carter Administration wrestling publicly with the thorny question of whether its reprisals against the Soviets should, for the first time, include the Olympic Games as a target. Many supporters of the Games argue that a boycott for any political reason is totally wrong and inappropriate. "If the Olympic Games are to survive," says Don Miller, executive director of the U.S. Olympic Committee (u.s.o.c.), "they must be apolitical and remain in the private sector."

That sentiment about the Olympics has not always held true. In Berlin in 1936, Hitler turned the Games into a goose-stepping showcase of Nazi propaganada. World Wars I and II snuffed out the 1916, 1940 and 1944 Olympiads. The 1972 Munich Games were shattered by an Arab terrorist attack on the Israeli team that left eleven Israeli athletes dead. Past Games have also been boycotted: in 1956, for example, Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands withdrew from the Melbourne Olympics as a protest of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. And in 1976, 28 African nations abandoned the Montreal Games as a protest against the participation of New Zealand, a country with strong sports ties with the apartheid government of South Africa.

Any major boycott or relocation of the Games would deeply embarrass and disappoint the Kremlin, which has tried ever since the early '60s to be named as host. Soviet leaders, notoriously insecure about their country's position in the world, view the Moscow Games as a way to greatly increase their nation's prestige, even as a way to legitimize their system. In the past three years, the Soviets have spent an estimated $375 million in constructing facilities. They are looking forward to tourist crowds of up to 300,000, plus, more important, world television audiences in the hundreds of millions. To deprive them of this might have more impact than any move the U.S. has yet made, including the grain embargo.

Even if Carter decides to order a U.S. boycott, he lacks the authority to enforce it. According to Olympic rules, only a country's Olympic committee may withdraw its athletes, and the u.s.o.c. is strongly opposed to any boycott. Whether it would refuse a formal presidential request is hard to say.

Rather than pushing for a boycott, many in the Administration prefer Mondale's suggestion about relocating the Games. The only two likely alternatives: Munich and Montreal, sites of the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. Such a move could be authorized only by the International Olympic Committee, which is reported dead set against moving the Games at such a late date. But the matter may well come up when it meets at Lake Placid, N.Y., during the Winter Olympics. The U.S. has made no move to keep Soviet athletes from competing at Lake Placid.

The Administration is in no hurry to decide about the Moscow Games. The White House is taking soundings on the idea, and is holding "tentative" discussions with the U.S.O.C. Meanwhile, other countries are assessing the same option. Saudi Arabia has announced it will boycott the Games, The Netherlands has said it is withdrawing financial support for its team and Prime Minister Joe Clark of Canada has "questioned the appropriateness" of a Moscow Olympics.

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