Hero’s welcome for U.S. Olympic team

Press, 27 February 1980, Page 44

Hero’s welcome for U.S. Olympic team

NZPA • Washington

President Carter gave a hero’s welcome to the U.S. winter Olympic team yesterday but he was confronted with widespread opposition among the athletes to his call for a boycott of the summer games in Moscow.

Mr Carter conducted a colourful, emotion - filled oageant of praise at the White House for the athletes who competed at Lake Placid.

But after a luncheon given by the President and his wife, the sneed skater, Eric Heiden, told reporters

that almost all the members of the team had signed a petition opposing Mr Carter’s demand for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

Heiden, who won five gold medals in speed skating and was personally hailed by the President minutes earlier, said that the athletes had brought the petition with them. But he was unsure whether it was delivered to Mr Carter.

“I don’t think a boycott is the right thing,” Heiden said. “I don’t like politics in sport. It’s hard on the

people who have been training all their lives.” Mr Carter called for the Moscow Games boycott as a protest against Russian military intervention in Afghanistan. In yesterday’s ceremony, the President repeated his pledge and said he would seek to provide alternative competition for the athletes.

“The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has violated world peace and the principles of the Olympics,” he said from the balcony of the south portico of the White House, looking down at the athletes.

He said he would soon meet some of the athletes due to compete in the summer games to discuss organising “an alternate world-class competition that will not harm Olympic principles or future Olympic games.”

“We are often told there are no more heroes,” Mr Carter told a cheering crowd- of government workers waving American flags, “hut our Olympic athletes are heroes.’

The ceremony began with the marine band playing the Olympic theme as the athletes inarched up

the stairs to be greeted by a beaming President. Mr Carter told the athletes: “You have thrilled the entire nation and we are all grateful.” The President embraced Eric Heiden and warmly greeted the American ice hockev team which upset the Russian team and went on to capture the gold medal.

“Eric Headen’s performance will be remembered for years to come,” he told the crowd. He called the hockey victory perhaps the greatest upset in the historic of sport. The cheerful ceremony

had some domestic political significance as well. Mr Carter had surrounded himself with the new American heroes one day before a crucial primary election vote against Senator Edward Kennedy in New Hampshire. The occasion demonstrated the ability of an incumbent president to use his office to command national attention. A bill to award Congressional medals to Eric Heiden and the ice hockey team was introduced in the House of Representatives by a republican Congressman Frank Annunzio.