page_title: 1980 Summer Olympics
section_title: Participation overview and boycott
hierarchical_section_title: 1980 Summer Olympics / Participation overview and boycott
caption_attribution_description: Moscow Olympic Village in winter.
context_page_description: The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Moscow, Soviet Union, in present-day Russia.
  The 1980 Games were the first Olympic Games to be staged in Eastern Europe, and remain the only Summer Olympics held there, as well as the first Olympic Games to be held in a Slavic language-speaking country. They were also the only Summer Olympic Games to be held in a communist country until 2008 in China. These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC Presidency of Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin.
  Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. Led by the United States, 66 countries boycotted the games entirely because of the Soviet–Afghan War. Some athletes from some of the boycotting countries participated in the games under the Olympic Flag. The Soviet Union would later boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics. The Soviet Union won the most gold and overall medals, with the USSR and East Germany winning 127 out of 203 available golds.
context_section_description: Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. Of the eighty participating nations, seven nations made their first appearance at this Games – Angola, Botswana, Cyprus, Jordan, Laos, Mozambique and Seychelles. None of these nations won a medal.
  Although approximately half of the 24 countries that boycotted the 1976 Summer Olympics (in protest against the IOC not expelling New Zealand who sanctioned a rugby tour of apartheid South Africa) participated in the Moscow Games, the 1980 Summer Olympics were disrupted by another, even larger, boycott led by the United States in protest at the 1979 Soviet–Afghan War. The Soviet invasion spurred Jimmy Carter to issue an ultimatum on 20 January 1980, that the US would boycott the Moscow Olympics if Soviet troops did not withdraw from Afghanistan within one month. 65 countries and regions invited did not take part in the 1980 Olympics. Many of these followed the United States' boycott initiative, while others cited economic reasons for not going. Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini hostile to both superpowers, boycotted when the Islamic Conference condemned the invasion.
  Many of the boycotting nations participated instead in the Liberty Bell Classic, also known as the "Olympic Boycott Games", in Philadelphia. However, the nations that did compete had won 71 percent of all medals, and similarly 71 percent of the gold medals, at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. This was in part because of state-run doping programs that had been developed in the Eastern Bloc countries. As a form of protest against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, fifteen countries marched in the Opening Ceremony with the Olympic Flag instead of their national flags, and the Olympic Flag and Olympic Hymn were used at medal ceremonies when athletes from these countries won medals. Competitors from three countries – New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain – competed under the flags of their respective National Olympic Committees. Some of these teams that marched under flags other than their national flags were depleted by boycotts by individual athletes, while some athletes did not participate in the march.
  The impact of the boycott was mixed. Some events, such as swimming, track and field, boxing, basketball, diving, field hockey and equestrian sports, were hard hit. Whilst competitors from 36 countries became Olympic medalists, the great majority of the medals were taken by the host country and East Germany in what was the most skewed medal tally since 1904.
caption: Olympic Village in February 2004
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