Twenty-five African nations boycotted the Montreal Games to protest against a New Zealand Rugby Union team's tour of apartheid South Africa. (Canadian Press)

Making the Canadian Olympic team in 1980 should have been defining career achievements for identical twins John and Paul Craig but their joy turned to anger when Canada followed the U.S. decision to boycott the Moscow Games.

John Craig, now executive director of the Ontario Track and Field Association, shudders when he hears French President Nicolas Sarkozy and others European leaders whip up fears of a possible boycott of the Beijing Olympics this summer.

"I would never counsel anybody to do it again," says Craig, who along with his brother had qualified in 1980 for the men's 1,500m run and then drained their bank accounts to finance a six-week Olympic training camp in California.

Craig, now 54, admits he had mixed feelings at the time. He had wanted to compete in the Moscow Olympics but he also opposed the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.

"I felt that there were certainly more important things in life than my participating in the Olympics and as much as I wanted to go I felt some support for the boycott because there were a lot of people suffering at the hands of a brutal regime," he remembers. "And, if we could make some sort of significant protest, disappointing as it would be, maybe it was the right thing to do."

Canadian wheat unloaded

The athletes had been told that their sacrifice would be part of a larger scheme that would include diplomatic and economic sanctions designed to pressure the Soviets into withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan.

"It didn't take us long to realize that nobody else was sacrificing anything," says Craig. "The day the Olympics started in Moscow the wheat started being unloaded off Canadian ships in Russian ports again. So nobody sacrificed anything but the athletes."

The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the Tibet protests to embarrass the Chinese as the Beijing Olympics approach. (Manish Swarup/Associated Press)

Attention turns again to the Olympics as a political tool. France's Sarkozy says he would not rule out a boycott of the Beijing Summer Olympics over the Chinese handling of protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. European Union leaders gathered in Slovenia on the last weekend in March with a boycott of the Beijing Olympics high on the agenda, though some lean toward a token boycott of the opening ceremony. U.S. President George W. Bush telephoned Chinese President Hu Jintao to urge his government to use restraint in dealing with protesters.

The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet's government-in-exile, of orchestrating the protests to embarrass the Chinese as the Beijing Olympics approach.

The part about embarrassing China may be true, but the Tibetan government-in-exile does not advocate a boycott of the Olympics. The Dalai Lama and his supporters want the Games to go ahead, mirroring the position of the International Olympic Committee, which is to expose China to the world and thereafter effect change.

According to Tsereng Tashi, the Dalai Lama's representative in London: "His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile are in favour of granting China the opportunity to hold the Olympics. That is why the Chinese government, instead of making false allegations that the Dalai Lama is trying to disrupt the Olympics, should, rather, be grateful for His Holiness for supporting its candidature to host the Olympics."

Canada's Dick Pound

Dick Pound, former vice president of the International Olympic Committee, was president of the Canadian Olympic Association at the time of the 1980 summer Olympics and has always opposed the intrusion of politics in the Olympic movement. He reserves particular disdain for the opinions of the French president.

"Sarkozy is part of the international political community," Pound said. "They are the ones that ought to be dealing with [Chinese human rights issues], not a whole bunch of athletes and coaches and trainers.

Canadian Dick Pound has always opposed the intrusion of politics in the Olympic movement. (Douglas C. Pizac/Associated Press)

"If they are so offended by the idea of any kind of contact with China it would be more persuasive if they were saying, 'We feel it is so egregious to have any contact with China that we will be cutting our relations with it, and we will prevent our citizens from travelling there, we will prevent our business from buying in or selling to China.'

"Then you might have some basis for saying part of this ought to include our Olympic athletes. Until that happens they just want somebody to make a gesture that involves no cost to them."

Moscow was not the first summer Olympics to be subjected to a boycott. Four years earlier, Taiwan refused to send athletes to Montreal in 1976 after being denied the opportunity to march independent of the People's Republic of China. Both Chinas stayed away from Montreal.

Twenty-five African nations also boycotted the Montreal Games to protest against a New Zealand Rugby Union team's tour of apartheid South Africa. This deprived the world of an Olympic clash in the 1,500m race between John Walker of New Zealand and world record holder Filbert Bayi of Tanzania. Walker won the gold medal while Bayi watched from the sidelines.

The Margaret Thatcher boycott

Dave Moorcroft, a former 5,000m record-holder, competed in three Olympic Games for Great Britain that were all subject to boycotts. The native of Coventry, England, who will be providing colour commentary for CBC in Beijing, recalls especially the Moscow Games of 1980 when the British Olympic Association defied Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to boycott.

"Thatcher preferred we boycott," Moorcroft says. "The BOA stood firm and said, 'We are going to go.' There were some competitors who were in the military who didn't go but almost 100 per cent of those who qualified went."

Moorcroft faced a personal dilemma much the same as the Craig twins. Was it morally right to compete while the host government perpetrated crimes against others?

"Sometimes sports people give a very simplistic answer that politics and sports shouldn't mix," Moorcroft says. "Some people thought that pretty naive. So there was a degree of pressure almost that if you went you were non-political and not supporting justice.

"I think the thing that probably swayed it was that, apart from the South African situation, where sport and trade and tourism were used to battle apartheid, the realization was that the sporting boycott of Moscow was less about Afghanistan and more about the West making a point against the East, and that sport was being used. Sports people are expendable. As far as the media was concerned the whole Afghanistan cause was forgotten once the Olympics were over."

Moorcroft believes the international Olympic movement has been strengthened since 1988, when 159 countries took part in the Games in Seoul, South Korea. In the Games of 2004 in Athens, Greece, 201 countries participated.

The IOC and the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee no doubt hope that common sense prevails for history has proven that few have more to lose than the athletes who put their lives on hold in pursuit of the Olympic dream.