With a thorough exploration of the political climate of the time and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, this book describes the repercussions of Jimmy Carter’s American boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Despite missing the games they had trained relentlessly to compete in, many U.S. athletes went on to achieve remarkable successes in sports and overcame the bitter disappointment of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity dashed by geopolitics. "The strength of Boycott is in the Caraccioli brothers' methodical presentation of the complicated events leading up to boycott."  —Wall Street Journal "The book also serves as a poignant tribute to hundreds of American athletes caught in the middle of a geopolitical chess match between superpowers." —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "Uniquely and poignantly captures the impact of American athletes denied the opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games. This book . . . becomes their belated, but deserved, Olympic salute."  —Dick Enberg, CBS Sports "It is reassuring that the Caracciolis decided to tackle this story about America and American athletes in a challenging time." —Anita DeFrantz, International Olympic Committee "In a brief foreword, former Vice President Walter Mondale apologizes to all athletes denied the opportunity to compete in the 1980 Olympics; it's the first of Boycott's many poignant moments." — Athletic Business Tom Caraccioli is the president of Lions Roar, LLC, a communications and public relations firm, and a former executive for NBC and USA networks.  Jerry Caraccioli is a television network executive in the CBS sports division. They are the coauthors of Striking Silver: The Untold Story of America's Forgotten Hockey Team . Boycott Stolen Dreams of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games By Tom Caraccioli, Jerry Caraccioli New Chapter Press Copyright © 2015 Tom Caraccioli and Jerry Caraccioli All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-942257-40-3 Contents Foreword, Authors' Note, Acknowledgements, Introduction, CHAPTER I Olympian*, CHAPTER II Afghanistan, CHAPTER III Carter Doctrine, CHAPTER IV "Ours Will Not Go", Chapter V The Vote, Chapter VI The Lawsuit, Chapter VII The Games Go On, Chapter VIII Results, Chapter IX Message To President Carter, Epilogue, Appendix, Sources, Index, CHAPTER 1 Olympian* The asterisk earned dubious notoriety as a reference mark in 1961. For nearly half a century, the * has continued to dot the landscape of professional and amateur sports with an equally questionable distinction. In 1961, then-Major League Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick made one of the most controversial rulings ever regarding the history of the game. After watching New York Yankees outfielder and slugger Roger Maris eclipse the immortal Babe Ruth's single-season home run record of 60 on the final day of the 1961 season, Frick convinced baseball historians to list Ruth's and Maris's marks as separate records based on the number of games each player had to accomplish their respective marks. Frick reasoned, or some say "caved into" his former sportswriter brethren, that Ruth had produced 60 homers in a 154-game season and Maris had recorded 61 in a 162-game season. Therefore, Maris's homer mark should belisted in the record books with an asterisk. From that day on, the * became part of baseball lore and history. And it stayed that way for the next 30 years. Today, the * has become a permanent part of the sports vernacular. The asterisk in today's sports world continues to denote a questionable achievement and has come into vogue again when talking about baseball's home run records. With the proliferation and accusations of steroids, human growth hormones and other performance-enhancing substances, historians and record keepers continue to be flummoxed when debating the * and its potential use. For members of the 1980 United States Olympic Summer Games team, the * is a reference mark they would rather not have to invoke when discussing their Olympian status. And though Olympic historians and fans of the Games have never made it an issue, some members of that team feel like that dubious symbol follows them throughout their personal history. For swimmer Glenn Mills, the * hit him right between the eyes when he was looking through his college alma mater's swimming media guide. "I went to school at the University of Alabama," explains Mills. "In the press guide, Alabama gives its history of all the people that were NCAA champions, Olympians, and things like that. When everything is listed, always next to our names is an asterisk, under the asterisk it reads: 'Made 1980 Olympic team, but country boycotted.' It's very seldom that you see any of our names listed as Olympians without an asterisk. It kind of implies, 'Well, they're Olympians, but maybe not really.'" Mills suffered further indignity when he traveled to Colorado Springs in the early 1990s to coach at a Select Camp. "We were staying a