Still hope for Soviet Olympic attendance

Press, 10 May 1984, Page 1

Still hope for Soviet Olympic attendance

NZPA-AAP Sydney A final decision on whether the Soviet Union will attend the Los Angeles Olympic Games will not be made until June 2, according to a member of the Soviet Sports Committee, Mr Valerie Kisselev.

June 2 is the last day for nations to accept or decline invitation to the Games.

Mr Kisselev, who is in Sydney with the Russian ice-skating team, said that yesterday’s decision not to attend the Olympics was “for today only.” It could be reversed, he said, provided the United States guaranteed the safety of the Soviet team.

About 50 groups in the United States had plans to terrorise the Russian team, he said. The Soviet athletes were afraid to go to Los Angeles without security assurances.

The announcement from Moscow yesterday brought to a head months of speculation over whether Russia would participate at Los Angeles. The statement, issued by the Soviet National Olympic Committee, came after months of complaints from Moscow about the United States’ handling of the Games and charges that the Russian athletes would be in danger.

The statement said that American authorities had a “cavalier attitude” to the Olympic charter and had grossly flouted the ideals of the Olympic movement. “In these conditions, the N.O.C. of the U.S.S.R. is compelled to declare that participation of Soviet sportsmen in the Games of the twenty-third Olympiad in Los Angeles is impossible,” it said. The news agency, Tass, said that the N.O.C. voted unanimously not to participate, although Western diplomats believe it was almost certainly a political decision taken in the Kremlin.

They also commented that the wording of the Soviet statement implied a possibility of attendance if United States behaviour changed, although its clear conclusion was that Moscow would stay away from the Games. The statement climaxed a mounting news media and official campaign in Russia against the United States’ handling of the Games which began when Washington, earlier this year, rejected Moscow’s Olympic attache, Oleg Yermishkin, saying he worked for the K.G.B. intelligence service. There is particular interest in whether East Germany — like the Soviet Union, a highly successful Olympic nation — will boycott the Games, due to open in July.

The East German news agency, A.D.N., reported Moscow’s decision without comment. The official Polish news agency, P.A.P., said that it left a question mark over Poland’s participation.

Czechoslovak sports officials reached in Prague from Vienna appeared surprised by the news. They did not expect any immediate reaction. “A decision of this kind, however, would not be taken by the Czechoslovak Olympic Committee alone. This is obviously a political decision,” said one Prague source. In Washington, the presi-

dent of the International Olympic Committee, Mr Juan Antonio Samaranch, pledged to preserve the Games in spite of the Soviet decision.

After meeting President Reagan at the White House, he said that the 1.0. C. had done its best to maintain the continued existence of international sports in 1980 when the United States boycotted the Games in Moscow.

“We have to do the same now,” he said. The United States and other nations boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest at Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.

The head of the Los Angeles Olympic Organising Committee, Mr Peter Ueberroth, who also attended the White House meeting, said Moscow’s decision was in retaliation for President Carter’s refusal to allow Americans to participate in Moscow.

“We are apparently paying the price for 1980, that is our interpretation,” he said. “You cannot have an event where there has been an attempt to damage it as

in 1980 and assume all of that is forgotten.” Mr Ueberroth pledged that the L.A.0.0.C. would “use every ounce of energy” to try to reverse Moscow’s decision.

The Mayor of Los Angeles, Mr Tom Bradley, whose city has been constantly criticised in the Soviet media as a polluted den of vice, said he was disappointed and shocked by the decision.

Officials put on a brave face and said yesterday that the event would still not lose money.

But unofficial estimates by»city officials said that the absence of the Soviet athletes, the biggest single overseas contingent, could cost at least SUSIOO million in lost television revenue, unwanted hotel rooms, and smaller crowds. Mr William Simon, the president of the United States National Olympic Committee, said he was surprised, saddened, and shocked by the Soviet decision. Further reports, page 8 and back page