and this is Nightline
every one of you living proof of what happens when America sets its sights high
and says let's create a little excellence
eighty-three gold medals for the United States a new Olympic record
but is their luster tarnished because the Soviet Bloc countries weren't there
we'll focus on that question tonight
this is ABC News Nightline
reporting from Washington
Ted Koppel
before we get to our primary focus tonight let's deal with a late breaking
story that could easily have become the Olympic disaster that so many law
enforcement officials were dreading
here from Los Angeles International Airport is Gary Shepard
Ted it was shortly after five o'clock this evening at a bus carrying luggage
from Turkish athletes
pulled up to the Pan Am terminal here at Los Angeles International Airport
there were no athletes aboard the bus
a police officer discovered a bomb
in the rear wheel well of the bus
he heard it ticking
some sort of an alarm was going off that indicated it was about to explode
Los Angeles police chief Darrell Gates says the officer
picked up the bomb
carried it off the bus
ran about sixty yards out onto the tarmac
and threw it down and then
ran away
police chief Gates says that
meantime
police officers the bomb squad have
rendered that bomb inoperative
it will not explode
but just as a precaution two terminals here terminals one and two were
evacuated
and finally the chief says everything is under control there was only one device
and they've got it
it won't explode and
that's the story from here for now. All right, Gary Sherpa, thank you very much of course if anything
significant develops on that story we will
update you on it immediately but now
our main focus for this evening it is a subject which understandably grates on
our national pride
all of us who watched and reveled in the triumph of so many young american
athletes do not like to dwell on the thought that some
perhaps even many of those victories might not have happened if the Russians
or the Cubans or the East Germans
had competed
well we're going to examine that question and we begin with ABC sports
commentator
Jim Lampley
it was in many ways a glorious competition
but it took place in the absence of two of the world's three most athletically
powerful nations
and it wasn't only the sportsmen of the Soviet Union and East Germany who were missed
there were Bulgarian weightlifters and wrestlers, Cuban boxers,
Czechoslovakian runners and Polish shot putters and triple jumpers
all of whom would have contended for gold medals here
to understand how the Eastern Bloc boycott diminished the competitive value
of these Olympics
you need only examine one statistic
there are two hundred twenty Olympic events in which world championships are
awarded
the nations who weren't here
account for nearly sixty percent of the reigning world champions in those events
while great respect is due the American athletes who won medals in sports where
they haven't previously been competitive
they themselves are aware their paths would have been more difficult
had communist Bloc nations participated
more difficult in boxing
where five Cuban world champions didn't fight
more difficult in cycling
where five Soviet and East German world champions didn't pedal
in wrestling where the probable gold medal favorites in sixteen of twenty events missed the
games
in women's swimming
where American women won twelve gold medals without breaking any world records
while world record holders in twelve events stayed home
Sine Cypher and Hogshead are listed for the same time and several nations gained medals
in women's track and field
where the winning time in the fifteen hundred meter run
was nearly eleven seconds slower than a Soviet held world record
in no sport did American athletes have more reason to be proud than in
gymnastics
but even there they benefited from political reality
Mary Lou Retton's path to the all-around gold medal might have been obstructed by any
of three Soviet gymnasts including world all-around champion Natalia Yurchenko
and the American men who won the team gold know how much harder that might have been
if the Soviets had been in Pauley Pavilion with Dmitry Bilizerchev
unquestionably the best male gymnast in the world
so while American athletes won more gold medals here than in any previous Olympic games
their accomplishment is no more impressive than what the Soviets did in Moscow four years
ago
they won eighty gold medals
amid a boycott that kept many more nations out of the competition
but fewer potential medal winners
there were dramatic signs here that the United States Olympic Committee's concerted efforts
to improve
the training and support of American athletes have paid off
twenty years ago
this organization subsisted on just over a million dollars a year
but they spent ninety five million dollars to prepare this Olympic team
the USOC has copied the model of Eastern European nations
in spending money on developing more sophisticated equipment
the results showed up in cycling
they supported the development of national teams and spent money to keep them together
all year round
the results were obvious in volleyball
where men's and women's teams which had never won a medal
both made it to the gold medal game
they encouraged the continued liberalization of amateur eligibility rules
so that maturing athletes like Edwin Moses and Dwight Stones could take money
and stay in their sport much longer than they might previously have been able to
they managed to nurture the hopes and dreams
of dozens of Olympians who were disappointed by another boycott
four years ago
and many of them
were even better here than they might have been in Moscow
and now that it is over what is probably more important than the medal count is
the confidence American athletes gained here
confidence that they can now compete on a broader front than at any time in the
past thirty years
confidence that if they devote themselves entirely to the pursuit of
success
the American amateur athletic structure is in a better position than ever before
to help them
there were many American medal winners here
who wouldn't have won medals except for the Soviet boycott
but if you told them that to their faces now
many of them wouldn't believe you
this is Jim Lampley for Nightline in Los Angeles
when we return we'll hear a Russian journalist's reaction to the Olympics as
we talk with the Washington bureau chief of the Soviet newspaper
Izvestia
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the Soviet block boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics follows a similar
boycott by the United States and a host of other nations
of the 1980 Moscow games earlier tonight we talked with Alexander Palyatin
Washington bureau chief of the Soviet newspaper is Vestia
about what those boycotts have meant for the Olympics
for whatever reasons we were not there in 1980 for whatever reasons you and
some of your
Eastern Bloc allies were not in Los Angeles in 1984 what effect did that
have on the Olympics in your opinion
I think that the Olympics have suffered to
a certain degree because of the
absence of that many wonderful athletes from the
Soviet Union, GDR, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria
according to some counts
more than half the world reigning
champions were absent from Los Angeles and I think it's quite significant that
during the Olympic games in Los Angeles
there were only 11 world records broken
whereas in Moscow for instance there were 36
now in Moscow the Soviet Union won
I believe 80 gold medals is that right?
and this time around the United States won 83 there can be no question I mean we
we don't have to get involved in a
nationalistic kind of debate here but there can be no question that in both
cases
the United States and the Soviet Union would have won fewer gold medals
if the other countries had been there what does that do then to the
to the competitive nature of these Olympic games? I think that the
competition
would have been much much better and the results would be
much much better as well. Give me your evaluation for a moment of
I realize that you do have to file your stories you're a working journalist
you have to file your stories at this time of day so you may not have been able
to watch all of the Olympics but from what you saw
give me your sense of how the Olympic aura the Olympic atmosphere was
affected
not to make my point sound very personal I'd like to quote from some of
the
articles which I read including the American press just recently in the last
copy of the
sports illustrated a write of this publication called
the Olympic Games in Los Angeles
a myriad instead of Olympiad by that he meant that
the kind of nationalism which reigned all over the
sports arenas was apparently unprecedented
also the other aspect to which we objected very strongly when we
explained our decision not to come to
Los Angeles is commercialization of the
games I think that hardly ever
anybody have seen that many commercials are interjecting into the sports programs
I remember that during the opening ceremony
Mr. Yuberoth even suffered when his
address to the spectators and to the athletes
was cut because of the fact that they wanted to show just another
commercial of Miller beer or something else well
are you sure you're not confusing now what is done by a commercial network
namely by the American Broadcasting Company in this case
and what was done by the Olympic organizers those are two separate things
as I'm sure you're... exactly but the Olympic organizers have chosen because of the nature of this
committed to go completely to
to ask the private industry to finance the games and I think that
what they actually did was to rent the Olympic Games to the
big business and another influence which the
big corporations financing the games have made in terms of
undermining the pure Olympic spirit is that
they were sort of corrupting the young athletes because I remember that the
Washington Post yesterday said that
after the final matches of the
boxing fighters every American fighter upon
winning a medal would wave the American flag and then
right away start discussing how much money he will get
when he turns professional so your overview then of the Olympics in closing
would be what
my overview is that sports wise the
Olympic Games in Los Angeles have suffered
a great deal because the level the
competitive level was pretty pretty mediocre
then it's fair to say that
also from the point of view of politicizing the games
by that I mean that it's
impossible to even recollect one
recent Olympic Games preceding this one
where national flags would be flown
in such an outrageous manner especially if it was the
host nation. Mr. Palatine I suspect that some of our American colleagues will take
issue with what you said but I thank you very much for coming here and sharing
your thoughts with us this evening.
Thank you. When we come back we'll talk with two American journalists who covered
the Los Angeles Olympics and who disagree on the impact of the Soviet
boycott
on those games.