Politics Affecting The Olympic Games During The Cold War

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Politics have saturated the modern Olympic Games since its infancy. In 1936 the Germans used the Games as a tool to propagate the strength of a renewed German nation and the ethnic superiority of its people. Throughout the Cold War the Olympics Games provided the only context, in which the two superpowers could directly compete and triumph over the other without the threat of global annihilation. One of the most significant incidences of politics infesting the Games was during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, were the United States lead a boycott against the Soviet held Games. In 1979 the Soviet Union sent troops in to Afghanistan to support the fledgling pro-soviet socialist government against the Islamist insurgency which threatened to topple the regime. In response to this seemingly logical action by the USSR, the then U.S. president Jimmy Carter decided to …show more content…

The closest similarity in the ancient Olympics to the 1980 Olympic boycott is the “Anolympiad” (non-Olympiad). The Anolympiad is the name given to the Olympiad of 364 BC. Olympia was captured by the Arkadians the previous year, creating a heated political dispute. The occupying Arkadians decided to celebrate the Olympic festivals as normal which prompted the Eleans to reclaim their territory by force. Arkadians were driven out of a portion of the site but the celebration continued despite the bloodshed. The Eleans refused to acknowledge the results of the Games and from then on those years Games were given the title of the Anolympiad. Both these events show how political issues could interfere with both the ancient and modern Olympics by thwarting a nation’s athletes from competing either through unrecognition or

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