Guess Who's Coming to Moscow

A final count isn't in yet, but some medals won't mean much

Whatever the outcome of various 1980 Olympic events, one contest is likely to be remembered for a long time: the tug-of-war over the American-made Olympic boycott. As the May 24 deadline for accepting invitations to Moscow passed, the U.S. and the International Olympic Committee were circulating their own, widely varying lists of who would attend and who would not. Meanwhile, the I.O.C. extended the deadline indefinitely and said that previous respondents could change their minds.

An accurate count of who will attend may thus not be available for weeks. The I.O.C. released figures last week indicating that 85 nations will send teams to Moscow, 26 will not, and 31 are undecided. Those numbers were dismissed as "clearly wrong" by White House Counsel and Boycott Coordinator Lloyd Cutler. The White House scorecard, which tallies only non-Soviet bloc countries, named 60 no-shows, 80 attendees, and five countries whose intentions are unknown. Said Cutler: "There is no way the Soviets can portray either that the whole world is coming to Moscow and supports the Soviet position or that it doesn't care."

Though the I.O.C.'s deadline extension was motivated by hopes that some no-shows might change their positions, both U.S. and Soviet officials welcomed the chance to push their causes further. "A waiver of a deadline to accept an invitation is also an opportunity for countries that have accepted to decline," said a State Department spokesman last week. On the same day the chairman of the Soviet Olympic Organizing Committee maintained that "some of the boycotters intend to revise their decisions."

Whether those decisions are in fact revised may depend on the effectiveness of various Soviet inducements. A free team ride to Moscow on the Soviet airline Aeroflot was sufficient to reverse the no-go decision of the cash-strapped Costa Rican Olympic Committee. Thailand, on the other hand, was offered only a 50% discount on Aeroflot in exchange for altering its plan to stay home. No thanks, said the Thais, who, along with other non-Communist Southeast Asian nations, are supporting the boycott. Jordan, which is sending a team to Moscow, was reportedly promised a visit by the Bolshoi Ballet. In South America and Lathi America, the Soviets have let it be known that free room, board arid round-trip Aeroflot charters are available for the asking. That offer was recently extended to African nations, some of which have already received Soviet athletic gear and coaching help to prepare for the Olympics.

Elsewhere the Soviets have been subtler. Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko visited France this spring in the midst of the boycott debate there; he pointedly told journalists that important trade-contract discussions were under way that could prove extremely profitable to the French. Although the Philippines had already been promised Moscow's free Olympic travel package if it decided to attend, the Soviets sent word later that large-scale purchases of Philippine coconut products were under consideration. No link was made to Olympic politics, but then none was needed. The message arrived only a few days before a meeting of the Philippine Olympic Committee, which voted nonetheless to support the boycott.

In Dublin last week a defiant Lord Killanin, president of the I.O.C., played two new cards that further confused the boycott picture. Killanin unveiled a $1 million "Olympic solidarity" fund created to assist national committees that are short of their usual government grants. (Killanin said the fund was originally for needy Third World nations but will now accommodate others.) He also indicated for the first time that the I.O.C. may per mit athletes from boycotting countries to compete as individuals.

Even if these moves provoke wholesale defections among the boycotters, certain events in the Summer Games will surely suffer. The absence of Japan, West Germany and the U.S. will undermine the value of medals in men's gymnastics, men's track and field, basketball, swimming, judo, boxing, freestyle wrestling and women's volleyball. Boycotts by individual sports federations--yachtsmen from Great Britain and Australia, equestrians from France, Switzerland and Australia --will deprive those events of much of their competitive stature. There will probably be additional dropouts from the Olympics by individual athletes whose countries have decided to go. A quarter of Australia's Olympic-bound athletes have withdrawn in the face of a public outcry over the country's decision not to boycott and the prospect of poor competition in some events. Among those stay-at-homes is Tracey Wickham, 17, holder of world records in two swimming events.

The Italian government cut its Olympic squad by nearly half after the nation's Olympic committee ignored the government's boycott recommendation and voted to go. The mechanism: it banned police and soldiers from Moscow competition and refused to alter exam schedules for student-athletes, who must now decide whether a trip to Moscow is worth losing a year's credit at their universities.

As athletes and Olympic committees pondered their options, the White House was making slippery use of statistics to prove that the boycott's effect was more than psychological. Countries on the U.S. no-show list accounted for 73% of the gold medals and 71% of all medals won by non-Soviet bloc nations at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Administration noted. Perhaps, but the fact is that nations the U.S. says are not boycotting Moscow accounted for 72% of the gold medals and 70% of the total medals in 1976.

Lord Killanin hinted last week that had more nations tried harder to apply other forms of pressure on the Soviets, notably trade sanctions, the I.O.C. might have taken a different line on the Moscow Games. "But the cheapest and easiest way to bring pressure to bear was to ask sportsmen to make the sacrifice," he scolded. "Athletes are defenseless against pressures of one sort or another. Governments must find solutions in other arenas outside that of the Olympic stadium."

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