DENVER (AP) — A boycott of next year’s Beijing Olympics will not solve any geopolitical issues with China and will only serve to place athletes training for the games under a “cloud of uncertainty,” the head of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee wrote to Congress on Thursday.
CEO Sarah Hirshland sent the two-page letter that put a more official imprint on the long-held USOPC stance that Olympic boycotts harm athletes and do little to impact problems in host countries.
Her letter specifically addressed those who believe a boycott of the Winter Games next February would serve as an effective diplomatic tool to protest China’s alleged abuses toward Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong residents.
She said that while the USOPC is also troubled by actions in China that “undermine the core values of the Olympic movement … an athlete boycott of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is not the solution to geopolitical issues.”
Hirshland offered a history lesson about the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980 in protest of the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan. That prompted the Soviet Union and several Eastern bloc countries to respond in kind at the Los Angeles Games four years later. More than 450 U.S. athletes who had qualified for Moscow never had a chance to compete in the Olympics.
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