By Julie Power
It was the Olympic Games of Mishka the Russian bear, of Brezhnev and communism and an unlikely 4 x 100 metre men's swimming medley win where broadcaster Norman May coined the slogan: "Gold, Gold for Australia, Gold".
But the Moscow Games, which opened 40 years ago on July 19, 1980, divided Australia, said swimmer Mark Tonelli, who swam the butterfly leg for the winning men's medley team.
Mark Tonelli, left, with Peter Hadfield, who is pictured in his uniform from the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980. Credit: James Brickwood
Tonelli, Lisa Forrest and decathlon champion Peter Hadfield and another 120 athletes opted to compete in defiance of the Fraser government's decision to back the US boycott of the Games in a protest against the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
On Monday, a group of these athletes – some who even still fit into their original uniforms – will gather to remember this bizarre chapter in sports history. Tonelli described it as: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, a young rebel gang took on the might of the empire."
Offered incentives by the federal government to stay at home, half the contingent backed out. Despite the Australian Olympic Federation agreeing six to five to send a team, the public pressure was too much for some, including sprinter Raelene Boyle and the men’s hockey, shooting, yachting and equestrian teams.
Olympian Lisa Forrest, centre, at a meeting in April 1980 to discuss the boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow. Credit: David James Bartho
Sixty-five nations backed the boycott instigated by US President Jimmy Carter; 80 countries sent athletes.
Tonelli said he was called a "traitor" by the then Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. Tonelli also received bombs threats and someone even spat at his mum.
Hadfield said he was offered "a serious amount of cash" – equivalent to half his annual teacher's salary at the time – not to attend. He is still angry that his wife Marilyn was "vilified mercilessly" by people too gutless to attack him personally.
Lisa Forrest, then 16, said her 12-year-old sister answered the phone and received a death threat intended for the swimmer.
Like many athletes who attended, Hadfield, who also represented Australia at the Commonwealth Games, spoke at rallies to drum up support for the athletes to attend.
The athletes said that the Olympics were about peace not politics.
Hadfield said then, and now, that the Fraser government had placed the "entire onus of responsibility of their policy on Afghanistan" on the athletes while exports of wool, wheat and rutile to the Soviet Union were rising.
When the team left Australia, Tonelli said it was "with no fanfare, no nothing, just get out of town".
In her book, Boycott, Forrest, a broadcaster, recalled her disappointment when she discovered the team would be marching under the Olympic banner, and not the Australian flag, at the opening ceremony in Lenin Stadium.
"It was a life experience that no one should be denied and after the dramas of the boycott it seemed important that we walk into that stadium as Australians and say 'we made it'."
The public attacks were "bloody hard" for someone as young as she was, Forrest said. The worst week in 1980 came after a series of big black front page headlines in The Sun savaging athletes for going. "I felt sick, nobody talked about mental health then, and I do remember being wiped out," Forrest said.
The public attacks caused self-doubt then, which she said recurred at Moscow before a disappointing swim, where she came in fifth.
The controversy distracted the team from training, said Tonelli. When the men's medley won, breaking records, it was "absolution, vindication" of their decision to attend.
He recalls chef de mission Phil Coles hugging him and yelling: "That'll teach them back home."
The "boundless hypocrisy" of the Olympic committee members who voted to boycott still sticks in Hadfield's craw when he hears boasts of Australia’s unbroken attendance at every modern Olympic Games. This record was a major reason why Australia won the Sydney Olympics, officials later conceded.
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