The Tide Turns At Last: Australia To Grant Official Recognition To Moscow 1980 Olympic Team
In an exclusive with News Ltd in Australia, SOS on what fair play, justice and reconciliation mean to those denied all three for decades. “We are flabbergasted at the support we’ve had. It’s ... going to be very emotional." - Max Metzker
Australia will finally grant official recognition to its Moscow 1980 Olympic team: just after lunch on July 30, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will stand in Parliament to acknowledge the 120 Australian athletes, coaches and team officials who went to Moscow.
At a ceremony in Canberra, he will also issue a formal and poignant welcome-home statement 45 years after the Aussies landed back in their country to a cold shoulder.
On the 45th anniversary of the opening in Moscow his Saturday, a weight lifts off the shoulders of Olympians and their entourage who never thought they would live to see the day when they would be honoured for representing Australia at the boycotted Games of 1980.
It is also understood that in his welcome-home speech, Albanese will also acknowledge athletes who were prevented from going to Moscow because their federations pulled out. Others opted out themselves, some feeling under pressure o do so.
Many had the course of their lives altered, never having been considered a part of the thread of fine Australian Olympic sports history.
They had been caught up in a political maelstrom, some having even received death threats, others treated as "traitors" and pariahs for defying their Government's backing of a ban that would have no bearing on the outcome of a far-away war and opting instead to do what they had trained for years to achieve: compete at the Olympic Games.
That achievement usually comes with an acknowledgement and honour or "representing" one's country. Not for those who travelled o Moscow: they left their country under something of a cloud and they returned home without fanfare, only their families and a few friends there to greet them at the airport.
Contrast that with this colour in a report at ABC after Paris 2024 last year:
The Australian Olympic team has received a warm welcome after arriving home from Paris after recording its most successful Games to date. Athletes, coaches and staff touched down at Sydney Airport about 6:50am on Wednesday with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the athletes' families at the airport to greet the triumphant Australian team. Mr Albanese said every athlete who competed was "worth their weight in gold" and had made Australia proud, in his welcome home address. "Before the plane took off yesterday, you had already etched your names into Australian sport history."
Now, the class of 1980 will get to feel that level of love, too, as the Australian Government and the Australian Olympic Committee call time on their differences and honour the folk caught in the crossfire of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of that country's communist regime. International condemnation was led by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who also blocked Americans from participation at the 1980 Games.
The Cold War escalated, the brutal, decade-long Soviet-Afghan War rumbled on, while many athletes from many countries around the world, and those who supported and worked with them at the time, were rendered collateral damage, a reality they've carried through their lives ever since.
With the 45th anniversary of the opening ceremony of the boycotted Games due this Saturday, swimmers and their coaches are among those about to join the ranks of those officially recognised as having represented their country at the Olympic Games.
Olympic swimming champions Michelle Ford (800 free), Mark Kerry, Peter Evans, Mark Tonelli, Neil Brooks and Glenn Patching (medley relay), as well as head swimming coach Bill Sweetenham, who played a big role in Ford's victory in the 800m freestyle as the only western woman to claim gold in the pool in 1980, are among those toasted by their nation on July 30.
In Turning The Tide, Ford's 2024 book with this author, she calls for the 1980 team to be recognised and we list the swimmers who raced in Moscow after another distance-freestyle ace, Max Metzker, had been one of two flag-bearers at the opening ceremony but had been unable to carry his nation's banner.
The Australian 1980 Olympic Swimming Team
Women: Rosemary Brown, Lisa Curry, Michelle Ford, Lisa Forrest, Georgina Parkes, Michelle Pearson, Karen Van de Graaf
Men: Graeme Brewer, Neil Brooks, Peter Evans, Mark Kerry, Ron McKeon, Max Metzker, Paul Morefoot, Glenn Patching
Turning the Tide was published in March last year by Fair Play Publishing, the outfit run by Bonita Mersiades that houses a fine library that includes sports books of cultural significance to Australian history:
Michelle Ford and Craig Lord
The book, and three Australian swimming World record holders, l-r, Jenny Turall (800, 1500m freestyle), Michelle Ford (800m freestyle) and Shane Gould (100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500m freestyle and 200m medley - simultaneously!) - courtesy of Fair Play Publishing
The book emerged with two key purposes beyond charting Ford's excellent career in swimming: recognition for 1980 team and a call for the International Olympic Committee to reach for reconciliation and recognition of those caught up in a different war, that on clean sport:
Craig Lord
That era was tough enough. The boycott added another heavy weight to the load, one that came with the bitter taste of events that left the likes of Ford feeling unsafe in her own country. As the swimmer's mother, Jan Ford, who recently mourned the passing of her husband Ian, wrote to the Australian Swimming Union in May 1980:
It is unbelievable to me when I as an Australian born parent must tell a 17-year-old girl whose grandfather fought for Australia for 3 years in the Middle East in World War II and who herself has never voted for any particular government and who I have taught to always be proud of the Australian flag that right now it is unsafe for her to return ‘home’.
The Australian Government's decision, apparently with bi-partisan support, comes too late for Jan Ford's husband and father to Michelle, Ian Ford and others who did not live to see the day, but better late than never.
SOS is happy to break the news to the global swimming community and those many other swimmers and coaches from around the world who wait yet for official recognition in their own countries, while Julian Linden, at News Ltd titles including The Australian and The Daily Telegraph breaks the news Down Under in an exclusive in which he talks to Ford, Metzker and others about what it means to them.
Metzker is over the moon with the news of pending recognition but tells Linden today that what he and his teammates went through cannot be washed away or repeated. He says:
“It was just horrible the way everything was turned against us. We were called traitors. Some people got death threats. One of the swimmers’ parents were spat on. My mum used to race home and get the mail before I got home just so I couldn’t read it. Up until the day she died, she would never tell me what was in those letters because it was so harmful. Another swimmer, who was based in the United States, got a visit from the CIA and was told to reconsider going to the Olympics with Australia because they could take his green card away.”
Read the full story on the political backdrop, the drama and the pending recognition to come:
Below is a deeper dive for the SOS subscribers who help fund our work, including the story of the day Bill Sweetenham met Malcolm Fraser, the PM who backed and enforced the boycott back in 1980, 30 years on.
