Athletes affected by the postponement of the Tokyo Games will need extra time to regain their fitness, but they can rest assured that they are saving lives by not competing this year, members of the US team that boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the International Olympic Committee to move this year’s Summer Games to next year. American athletes missed the Moscow Games when the US led a boycott against them over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
“I don’t think it’s possible for athletes to get to 80 to 90 percent of peak performance and not roll the clock back and start over, perhaps further than you think you ought to,” two-time Olympic track and field gold medalist Edwin Moses, who was part of the 1980 team, told a teleconference on Tuesday.
“You’re not going to be able to stay in shape for 15 months and you really want to prevent yourself from getting injured, because that’s what takes most athletes out as well,” he said.
Olympic volleyball player Rita Buck-Crockett, who was also part of the 1980 team, said that today’s disappointed athletes should know that their sacrifice is not for nothing, although she said that she could not say the same for the 1980 boycott, which to this day she said she does not understand.
“In this time now, what you have to understand is that you are saving lives by not going to the Olympics this year,” she said. “As hard as it is, you have only one year hopefully and you’re going to save 1 million lives.”
“You know, when we boycotted, as Anita [Defranze] said: ‘We didn’t save one life,’” Buck-Crockett said, adding that the boycott left her devastated.
Buck-Crockett was able to compete in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, where she took home a silver medal.
“We shouldn’t have had that position, but now just look at it as you’re saving lives,” she said. “Just go do your sit-ups in your living room. Go do your sit-ups. Go run. Do whatever you can do to keep yourself in shape.”
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