“Ours Will Not Go”: A History of the Olympic Boycott of 1980 Interviewer: Matt Petraites Interviewee: Glenn Mills Instructor: Mr. David Brandt 14 February 2012 Table of Contents Page Interviewer Release Form……………………………………………………………..2 Interviewee Release Form………………………………………………………….....3 Statement of Purpose………………………………………………………………….4 Biography……………………………………………………………………………..5 Historical Contextualization Paper……………………………………………………7 Interview Transcription………………………………………………………………19 Audio Time Indexing Log……………………………………………………………57 Interview Analysis……………………………………………………………………59 Works Consulted……………………………………………………………………..64 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………..68 Statement of Purpose The purpose of interviewing Glenn Mills, an Olympic swimmer, was to determine the impact of the 1980 Olympic boycott from the athlete’s perspective, and to determine the role politics play in the Olympics. Examining the boycott from an athlete’s perspective provides evidence as to how the boycott impacted the athletes. The interview also underscores how Glenn Mills was able to turn the boycott into something positive in his life. Biography Glenn Mills was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania on November 21, 1961; however, for the majority of his childhood he lived in North Ridgeville, Ohio. When Mr. Mills was young, one of his two older brothers, Kyle, was diagnosed with Osteogenic Sarcoma, more commonly known as bone cancer. Shortly after the diagnosis, Kyle died, which caused Mr. Mills to become more dedicated to swimming. Mr. Mills moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to train with a more superior swim team. Throughout his life Mr. Mills also lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Cleveland, Ohio; New Paltz, New York; Stevensville, Maryland; and New York, New York. His time in Tuscaloosa was spent at the University of Alabama, where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications. Near the end of his senior year in high school, Mr. Mills won first place in the Ohio High School Championships, where he broke the National High School record in the 100 breaststroke. Shortly after graduating from high school, Mr. Mills participated in the swimming portion of the 1980 Olympic Trials, won first place in the 200 breaststroke, and earned a spot on the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team. Although the United States did not attend the summer Olympics in 1980, due to the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics Mr. Mills, and the rest of the Olympic Team, received the Congressional Gold Medal of Achievement for the sacrifice of not participating in the games, although it was not their choice. During his college career in swimming, Mr. Mills was a member of the 1982 USA World Championship Team, and he was the 1983 NCAA Champion in the 200 breaststroke. Mr. Mills was inducted into the University of Alabama Swimming Hall of Fame, the Cincinnati Marlin Swimming Hall of Fame, and the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame. Since swimming in his youth, Mr. Mills has been coaching and teaching swimming for 25 years, and has also created, and is president, of GoSwim Productions, which successfully provides a line of DVDs featuring some of the world’s greatest swimmers demonstrating helpful drills. Mr. Mills enjoys anything to do with swimming, playing guitar, and watching Formula 1 Racing. He has worked at more than 150 swimming camps and clinics and enjoys helping swimmers improve by coaching, teaching, and creating instructional videos through GoSwim. Mr. Mills currently lives in Manhattan with his wife Rachel Stratton-Mills, who is the head coach of Asphalt Green Unified Aquatics (AGUA). He has two children, Samantha and Kyle. “Ours Will Not Go”: A History of the Olympic Boycott of 1980 The Olympic Creed reads, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well” (Greenspan 15). However, in the summer of 1980, the U.S. Olympic athletes would not be allowed to take part due to a U.S. boycott of the games in Moscow. Only a total of 80 countries were represented in Moscow, which is about one third less than the number that had attended the games in Munich eight years prior. The reason for the boycott was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The United States had been in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, so this new communist action further antagonized the United States, who was the leader in the boycott. Earlier that year, The United States hosted the 1980 Olympic Winter Games, defeated the Soviet’s prestigious hockey team and went on to win the gold medal. The Olympic Games indicates, “The battle for prestige between the two superpowers was evident in the ice hockey tournament. The Soviets had been gold medalists in the sport at each Winter Olympics since their shocking defeat at the hands of the Americans at Squaw Valley in 1960” (149). A clear upset had occurred in Lake Placid that year, however President Jimmy Carter wanted the United States to boycott the summer games of that same year due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Eventually President Carter’s skills in persuasion caused the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to vote to not attend the 1980 Olympic Summer Games. The athletes of the United States would not be permitted to go to Moscow. In order to understand the boycott of the 1980 Olympic Summer Games, one must first examine the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and gain a first-hand perspective from an athlete who was denied the opportunity to compete in the Olympics. Athletes were disappointed with the committee’s decision, including swimmer Glenn Mills, who on this topic had to say: In the press guide, Alabama gives its history of all the people that were NCAA champions, Olympians, and things like that. When everything is listed, always listed next to our names is an asterisk, under the asterisk it reads: ‘Made 1980 Olympic team, but country boycotted.’ It’s very seldom that you see any of our names listed as Olympians without an asterisk. It kind of implies, “Well they’re Olympians, but maybe not really.” (Mills qtd. in Caraccioli 2) The boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games was a true misfortune for the sports world as well as many athletes’ lives. In order to understand President Jimmy Carter’s reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, one must examine the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. According to historian Allan Winkler, “The cold war was a bitter, usually nonmilitary, conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted for almost 50 years” (1). The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II, and they defeated the Axis powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan. However, disagreements between the Allies began to develop even before the war ended. The Allies met in February 1945 at the Yalta Conference and agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation, and it was agreed that Eastern Europeans would have free elections. In June 1945 the United Nations was formed to protect countries against aggression and the five permanent members were the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China and France. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, later ignored the Yalta agreement in order to provide a buffer along the western border of the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia were established as communist countries (Beck 531-3). In his “Iron Curtain” speech on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill stated, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent” (Churchill qtd. in Beck 533). Europe was now divided into East and West. According to historian Winkler, “Stalin argued that capitalism and communism were on a collision course and a series of terrible crises would tear the capitalist world apart. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas considered his speech to be a declaration of World War III” (12). The U.S. and the Soviet Union almost immediately entered an arms race, which included atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman gave a speech in which he asked Congress to assist people who were resisting subjugation and the Soviet threat of communism. In particular, he requested help for Greece and Turkey, and this became known as the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, created by U. S. Secretary of State George Marshall in June 1947, provided economic aid to Western Europe (Winkler 19-21). The Marshall Plan was successful, and when the British, French, and Americans decided to merge their German zones in order to counter the Soviet threat, the Soviets cut off access to Berlin. This action resulted in an airlift by the Western powers that broke the blockade, as tensions between the Soviet Union and the West mounted. The next step was the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in 1949, in which 12 nations banded together in a defensive military alliance (Winkler 23). In response, the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955 with seven communist countries. The Berlin wall, which divided East and West Berlin, was built in 1961. On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first unmanned satellite, and in 1958 the U.S. followed by launching its own satellite, Explorer I. The space race continued through 1969 with the Apollo 11 manned moon landing. (Beck 535-7). Occasionally, the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union could not be contained because the Soviets moved to take over non-communist countries in Asia and the United States was concerned with the domino theory and moved to stop the spread of communism.