In 2001, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2008 Games to Beijing. Immediately, memories of Moscow 1980 came flooding back.
The then Soviets used the games (and remember, the USA wasn’t there due to a boycott protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1979, 80 countries followed suit) to press home their advantage. The USSR won 80 gold medals.
And expect the Chinese to do the same in Beijing in 2008 as well, even though there is no boycott this time around.
Even the drugs issue could raise its head again in Beijing this year, similar to what happened in 1980 when most of the gold medals were won by the Soviets in sports such as weightlifting.
Tthere were some doubts about the gold medals won by the Soviet weightlifters because some of them were accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs.
And the same thing could apply here as well in Beijing.
The Soviets also controlled media rights, which meant that the foreign TV networks had limited access to what they could and could not cover as far as news reporting went.
China is likely to do the same thing too.
Which means that Seven (who also covered the 1980 Olympics) will give Australian viewers limited coverage and most of it will be controlled by the Chinese government, not the IOC.
In closing, the International Olympic Committee has probably made one of the worst decisions in its history.
It didn’t realise the mistakes it made about awarding the Olympics to Moscow in 1980, and 28 years later, it still hasn’t learned it’s lesson.
That lesson is quite simple: award an Olympic Games to a dictatorial regime like it did with Moscow in 1980, or Beijing this year, and it will come back to haunt them.
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