1980: an overview

Free Olympics

This was the year of the Moscow Olympics and the ill-fated Olympic boycott. Although many Western nations did attend the Games, Ukrainians in Canada and Argentina staged their own counter-Olympics to dramatize concern for Soviet human-rights violations, the invasion of Afghanistan and the subjugation of non-Russian nations that cannot compete under their own national flags in international competitions. Nearly 400 athletes of Ukrainian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Armenian descent participated in the Free Olympiad outside Toronto, while 200 young people from various Ukrainian organizations held a Free Olympics in Buenos Aires.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 28, 1980, No. 31, Vol. LXXXVII

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