Talk:1984 Summer Olympics boycott

Untitled
Shouldnt South Yemen be added to the boycott list ? (Tec15 (talk) 07:14, 12 April 2009 (UTC))
 * it's ther

i tried to fix the pro-soviet POV in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.28.22.13 (talk) 16:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://news.google.ie/newspapers?id=-MMcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p1kEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6804,4042639&dq=1984+olympic+boycott+soviet&hl=en
 * In 1984 Summer Olympics boycott on 2011-05-25 05:11:15, 404 Not Found
 * In 1984 Summer Olympics boycott on 2011-06-24 05:58:17, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 05:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This article is just too funny. Romania never had anything to do with the Soviet Union, the language, culture, and people are completely different... they were never a Soviet republic/satellite, and even during the communist regime (they were actually democratic before the communist era and now are a democracy again), both the people and politicians hated (and still hate) the Russians.

POV in portrayal of U.S. view of boycott
I think the portrayal of the U.S. response to the boycott is factually inaccurate in at least one respect and tinged by a somewhat anti-U.S. perspective that's inconsistent with the NPOV policy. One sentence reads, "The three top medal winners from the 1980 Games in Moscow were among the boycotters, but the United States saw this as a "clear advantage" as it meant they would win more medals." The clear implication to me from that sentence is that the U.S. wanted to face watered down competition and considered it to be a good thing because it would help the medal haul. The citation to that sentence doesn't support that view. It actually contradicts it. First of all, the quotes are deceptive. The phrase "clear advantage doesn't appear in the article. The article says that the absence of the boycotting nations "would leave the United States the clear dominant force." And that's an analysis of the Associated Press article author. It's not a quote from a USOC representative - let alone their expressed hope. To the contrary, the quoted USOC people seem to prefer the competition of a fully-attended Olympic Games. USOC executive director F. Don Miller is quoted as saying, "The same competition is not there with their non-participation." And later "Certain victories might not be considered hollow victories by athletes. It's absolutely not as legitimate a competition as it would have been. And I think our athletes look at it the same way." Furthermore, the wikipedia article sentence ignores the portion of the source that notes three Eastern Bloc countries were the top medal winners in 1980 in part because that Games was boycott by dozens of countries. The last issue is the description of the U.S. as "desperate" because of the boycott. The citation for that sentence is behind a paywall, so I'm not sure if the source supports it. But I'm skeptical because of the problems in the section. Plus, it seems a bit odd to view the 1984 boycott as causing desperation when the 1980 Games went ahead even though about 4 times as many nations participated in that boycott. I'm going to make some changes, but it was a little bit much to explain in an edit summary. --JamesAM (talk) 17:19, 31 March 2012 (UTC)