It is no consolation that we were ultimately proven right that this boycott not only punished the wrong ones, but that it also had no political effect whatsoever: the Soviet army stayed nine more years in Afghanistan. In the end, the National Olympic Committee of West Germany was one of many to boycott the Games. Our voices were heard neither by the politicians nor by our sports leaders. I had to realise that the sports organisations had very little, if any, political influence, while on the athlete side we had very little say. As the chair of the West German athletes’ commission, I strongly opposed this boycott because it punished us for something that we had nothing to do with – the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet army. This foreshadowed another defining moment four years later, when I experienced the political impotence of sport at the time of the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Their devastation at having their Olympic dream shattered at the last possible moment after so many years of hard work and anticipation still haunts me today.
After asking what was happening, I learned they had to leave because of a last-minute decision by their governments to boycott the Games. Many were in tears, others hung their heads in despair. Shortly before the opening ceremony, I looked outside the window of our room in the Olympic Village to see a large group of African athletes with packed bags. One incident clouded my first Olympic experience, however.
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