22. Olympic Summer Games
Olympic Medals in the games of 1980 in Moskau
631 Medals in 23 Sports in 203 Events
The Summer Olympics in Moscow took place from July 19. until 3.8. instead of. In 1976, 40 African countries boycotted the Montreal Games, and the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 was the reason for 42 countries to boycott the Moscow Games. Another 24 countries did not take part for financial or sporting reasons. When the games were awarded to the Russian capital, there were doubts in the United States about participating in the motherland of communism. In addition, the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukowski called for a boycott. The main countries that supported the boycott were: USA, Federal Republic of Germany, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Norway, Argentina. Of the western states, Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Greece, participated in the Olympic Games in Moscow. There were warning voices that a Soviet boycott was to be feared as an act of revenge at the summer games in Los Angeles that followed four years later. This should be true. The losers in this cold war at the highest sporting level were those athletes who had prepared for the Olympic Games for four years but were not allowed to participate!
The opening and closing ceremonies, as well as most of the competitions took place in Moscow, the football tournament also in Ukraine and Belarus, the sailing competitions in Talinn in Estonia. By not participating in the USA and many western countries, the Soviet Union achieved the best result in Olympic history with 195 medals. 80 were in gold, the GDR was in second place with 126 medals, 47 of them in gold. The dominance of these two states was extreme, winning more than half of all medals, over 62% of all gold medals. The most successful Olympians were the Soviet gymnast Alexandr Dityatin with 8 medals, one medal more than Mark Spitz in 1972. However, he was only three Olympic gold medalists, plus he won four silver and one bronze medals. Among the women, GDR swimmer Karen Metschuck was the most successful with three gold and one silver medal. It is suspicious that not a single medal was withdrawn for doping.