Allright, I'll be the first to break the ice in our brand new Olympics forum. And my questions is would you support the US Govt not attending the opening ceremonies this summer? Why would you and why not if you don't agree? I personally think that there are much better ways to tell China that we support Tibet, than boycotting the opening ceremony, or interrupting the running of the torch. I say leave sports be sports, and don't involve politics with it, the Olympics are a world wide event and every country pretty much participates. I love the Olympics myself, and watch with my dad almost every sport that they show, no matter what it is. (since thats the only time you can see all those weird sports lol)
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (CelticKing @ Apr 14 2008, 07:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Allright, I'll be the first to break the ice in our brand new Olympics forum. And my questions is would you support the US Govt not attending the opening ceremonies this summer? Why would you and why not if you don't agree? <u>I personally think that there are much better ways to tell China that we support Tibet, than boycotting the opening ceremony, or interrupting the running of the torch. I say leave sports be sports, and don't involve politics with it, the Olympics are a world wide event and every country pretty much participates. </u> I love the Olympics myself, and watch with my dad almost every sport that they show, no matter what it is. (since thats the only time you can see all those weird sports lol)</div> I totally agree with you. Politics and Sports shouldn't go with eachother. but This IMO is the one exception. T-Shirts saying Free Tibet won't cut it IMO. I would do something like When i have an interview with whoever mention it then. If only one athlete does it it of course won't work. But could you imagine the Uproar if pretty much every athlete said "Free Tibet" or "this is for Tibet" Obviously China will win a lot of medals though and they of course will be forced to say nothing about Tibet. I also thought about a possible Boycott all together but that would be harsh on the Athletes. Imagine if you've been training all your life for it and your in your peak. Then your country decides to boycott the Olympics. I'd be Pissed. So what to do??? After all that rant I'm no closer to any ideas lol.
Gordon Brown has said that he will not be attending the Opening Ceremony, but added that he 'never had any plans to attend it', so it's difficult to read into the situation. It sounds to me as though he wants the best of both Worlds - he wants those who want him to boycott the ceremony to think that he will boycott it and those who don't to think that he's not boycotting it as such, rather not attending it on other grounds (i.e. no time). I'm not sure you can use the argument that politics and sport are separate, because it is the politicians who would boycott the Opening Ceremony, not the athletes. It is, therefore, a political matter (as most things are with politicians). It all depends on the interpretations of attending the event that people may make. One might say that by attending the Ceremony the politician is condoning the Human Rights regime of China, or their actions with regard to debate. Another person may say that it is totally irrelevant - that the politician is merely enjoying the global spectacle of the Olympic Games. Overall, it simply depends on the media in the specific country. If the media mounts pressure upon its politicians not to attend the Ceremony, they likely won't, else face uproar from the media in their country. If the media says they should attend the Ceremony, then the politician in question probably will attend. That is the unfortunate state of politics around much of the Western World at the moment: the media has for too much impact.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/b...3-brennan_x.htm 25 years later, Olympic boycott gnaws at athletes They are in their 40s now, the age when people tend to start celebrating anniversaries, if only this were one to celebrate. Why would they want to remember this? Why note the anniversary of something they were prevented from doing, the anniversary of the worst moment of their athletic lives? Twenty-five years ago this week, the U.S. Olympic Committee's House of Delegates, facing withering pressure from the Carter White House, voted by more than 2 to 1 not to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. President Jimmy Carter ordered the boycott after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan. Viewed through the prism of international history, you tend to forget that there were people hurt by this decision, hundreds of young athletes, torn between supporting their president in an international crisis even as they wondered how their lifetime dream had been shattered by an invasion on the other side of the world. Some U.S. athletes sued the USOC over the decision but lost. There was nothing more they could do. The Games went on without the Americans and athletes from 64 other countries that joined the U.S.-led boycott. "People forget what happened in 1980," said Craig Beardsley, a New Jersey kid who set the world record in the 200-meter butterfly 10 days after his Olympic race went off without him. "You meet people, and once they find out you were a swimmer, they usually ask, 'Did you go to the Olympics?' It's never an easy answer, and there's always a footnote. When they ask, 'Oh, did you get a medal?' it's kind of hard to tell them that I was not there because then you have to go into the whole story, and the last thing I'm looking for is sympathy. I just try to avoid the question and change the subject. Kind of like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. ... What do you think of Michael Phelps?' " You've probably never heard of Craig Beardsley. How could you have? As he says, "1980 was one of those aberrations in time that we just happened to get stuck in." He didn't go to the Olympics, never won the gold medal that certainly could have been his, never reaped the benefits that could have been coming to a U.S. swimmer winning a big race behind the Iron Curtain. He says there is no way to know if he would have won an Olympic gold medal in Moscow on July 20, 1980, the day his race was held, but we do know that on July 30, 1980, he set the world record at the U.S. nationals, swimming a second and a half faster than Sergei Fesenko of the Soviet Union, who won the Olympic gold medal in Moscow. Beardsley kept training, graduated from the University of Florida, waited four years for another chance at the Olympics. Then, at 23, he missed making the 1984 Olympic team by .36 of a second. "I was devastated," he said. "I felt I owed it to so many people who had stuck with me." During the Los Angeles Games, when so much of the nation tuned in, he and his family went on vacation to Hawaii and didn't turn on the TV at all. Years later, he would meet U.S. Olympic hockey star Mike Eruzione at a dinner in New York. "We definitely have different memories of 1980," Beardsley said with a wry laugh. To this day, Tracy Caulkins Stockwell says when she thinks of the boycott, she feels sorriest for U.S. teammates like Beardsley, "those who didn't have another chance" in the Olympics. Caulkins, now 42 and living in Brisbane, Australia, with her husband and four children, was the USA's most dominant swimmer when she was prevented from attending the 1980 Games. She hung around for four more years and met with great success, winning three gold medals in L.A. "What really hits home to me about the boycott was the Soviets didn't pull out of Afghanistan for nine years," Caulkins said. "Did it put any pressure on them? No, it was just a missed opportunity for many athletes. It just doesn't seem fair." Said Beardsley, 44, who went on to work on Wall Street, "If it was going to do some good, then we could sacrifice. But as time went on, as we realized what little impact it had, I became angry for what the boycott did to all these people, my friends and teammates, and people in all those other countries too." The Soviets and East Germans returned the favor in 1984, boycotting L.A. and lessening the competition at the 1984 Games. In a 1991 interview, Russian swimming legend Vladimir Salnikov said he still lamented not facing the Americans in Moscow in 1980, and again in L.A. in 1984. The matching boycotts robbed an entire generation of athletes on both sides of the Iron Curtain of their greatest competition on the world's grandest stage. But time does move on, and few if any remember the anniversary anymore. "You can sit around and 'if' all day," said world champion gymnast Kurt Thomas, who would have been a favorite at the 1980 Olympics, "but eventually, you have to learn to live with it."
I don't really buy the sports and politics separation point. You can't deny that they're intricately linked and they have been throughout the history of the modern Olympics. The way I see it, the IOC had this coming. Any protest should've been expected and its hard to complain about it when any idiot would've seen this coming. They decided to give the Olympics to China because they saw the money in an untapped market (with lots of advertising revenue, etc.) and were willing to overlook their terrible human rights record and the fact that the country's hardly ready for such an event (that seems to be an overlooked story). They can't have it both ways, though. If you're willing to give a country the Games when you know they're not suitable for it, then you have to deal with people who want to use that venue as a means of showing the world how oppressed they are. On the topic of a boycott, I don't really support it. Like Denny's article pointed out, the real damage is being done to amateur athletes. These are dudes that go by on very little pay, with very little recognition, and the Olympics is really their only opportunity to make a solid living for themselves. They shouldn't be punished for the idiocy of the suits, and I think there are more reasonable means of protesting the Games.
I'm not a fan of boycotting an event that was created to NOT be a political forum. We move further and further away from the original concept of the Olympics in the mold of the ancient Games.... sigh
But, What gets me is that before the Olympics were announced in Beijing not many people knew/Gave a crap about The Tibet Ordeal. Now that there is a major event everyone seems to have jumped on the free Tibet band wagon. So there could be positives out of this if more people are pushing to "Free Tibet."
