Here’s hoping it doesn’t enter the conversation again.
“For an Olympic athlete, a boycott is an absolute tragedy,’’ track great Edwin Moses said. “We only get that one shot every four years.’’
Moses hasn’t run in an Olympics since 1988, though he’s got a unique insight into boycotts. When he was dominating the 400-meter hurdles for the better part of two decades he seemed to run into one every time he set his sights on the Olympics.
The boycott in 1988 in Seoul was so small he struggled to remember the nations involved. The one in Moscow eight years earlier was so big that it almost surely cost him a gold medal.