Yachting-Live

‘Jacky’ Rogge Saves Sailors Boycott Grief
The untimely tragedy of Chris Law’s death last summer made me think then about the affects of an Olympic boycott.

In his case, a seemingly invincible man felt he was in some way unrecognised and under-appreciated because some committee somewhere decided that British sailors staying away from the Olympic regatta in Tallinn would affect Soviet foreign policy. The experience of 1980 resided in Law for the rest of his unsettled life.

Back then, Olympic boycotts were a weapon of mutual distrust in the Cold War. It was against this background that Ted Turner set up the Goodwill Games. Turner was still very much one of ocean racing’s great characters and a winning America’s Cup skipper whose business extended not much beyond a billboards and the Atlanta Braves.

In 1980, the British government ducked the boycott issue (shades of the Cricket World Cup and Zimbabwe here) and left it to individual sports federations to make up their minds. The sailors and equestrians stayed at home. Few others did. Law was in his prime then; serious medal material. Eddie Warden-Owen, now the new chief executive of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, was another to have his chance of medal taken away.

Back to today.

Only half an ear or an eye was needed to the news over the weekend to know that four words were being joined: Tibet-China-Olympics-Boycott.

The IOC seemed to want to forestall any such talk with president Jacques Rogge taking the unusual step of issuing a statement on Easter Sunday saying the “Olympics are a force for good” and that change in China will come “by opening up the country to the scrutiny of the world”.

Sailors tend to think Jacques Rogge as one of their own. Most call him Jacky, familiar from his three Games from 1968 in which he sailed for Belgium. He will have witnessed first the impact of the partial boycott in 1976. — Tim Jeffery, his full article in his blog at blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/timjeffery

Judy Moody Saves The World by Megan McDonald paperback £2.00 (0 Bid) End Date: Sunday Nov-23-2008 5:52:47 GMT Bid now | Add to watch list

Popularity: 13% [?]

Listen to this podcast

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.