A lot about the world was different in 1980. The height of the Cold War meant icy relations between the U.S. and the Soviets. The situation escalated to a point that the U.S. government, in its infinite wisdom, decided the best way to fight communism was by not sending athletes to the Olympic summer games in Moscow.

Homer’s Bruce Barton remembers the summer well. He and his brother Greg had both made the Olympic kayaking team that May, but instead of being celebrated as athletic kings on the world’s greatest stage, they were used as pawns in the political arena.

“We went to the White House instead to meet Jimmy Carter … I would have rather gone to Moscow,” Bruce bluntly states.

Bruce had competed in the 1976 Montreal games, and Greg would go on to medal in ‘84, ’88 and ’92. That didn’t make missing out on the games any easier to swallow.

“It was hard. You invest a lot of time and a great part of your life in training for that. To get that far and then not be able to go … it’s really a letdown,” Bruce recalls. “We were against it, and looking back on it, I don’t think it accomplished anything.”

The Olympic games are visiting a communist nation this summer, and once again talks of a boycott are gaining steam. The Olympic torch can’t make its way down a city street without an ensuing riot. Protesters are calling for a boycott of the opening ceremonies - and possibly the games – unless China improves upon its human rights policies.

Bruce has never been in favor of using sports as a political tool, but he admits his world travels have had an impact on how he views other nations.

“All countries have some differences. (The Olympics) blends all these people together and you get to see that things aren’t always the same as they are here in the United States,” he noted, “but they’re surviving well and flourishing, even though their system’s not the same.”

The fact of the matter is that sport will be used as a political tool. Every Chinese victory will be seen as a symbol of their economic rise, even if all it really means is that an individual spent more hours in the gym than his competition. It will be spun as a victory for collectivism over individualism; communist over capitalist.

Something as publicized as the Olympics is an easy way for a political message to reach a large audience, but what exactly would a boycott accomplish besides robbing so many athletes of a chance at greatness? Bruce and Greg were fortunate enough not to have been completely deprived of Olympic opportunity by the 1980 boycott, but many were not as fortunate. How could anyone advocate crushing another generation of athletes’ dreams?

Of the many seminal moments in Olympic history, many have come in times of political strife. Tommie Harris and Jon Carlos lowered their heads and raised their fists in 1968 to show that blacks of America were still suffering. Of the multiple boycotts that took place in the Montreal games, none sent a more powerful message than the participation of an Israeli team which had 11 members murdered at the 1972 Munich games.

In this regard, no moment compares to when Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin games. At a time when Hitler was professing the superiority of the Aryan race, a man of the “lowered colored people” was able to elevate to the top of the medal stand, and in the homeland of the “chosen people” no less. It took the culmination of the world’s armies to ever accomplish what Owens did that summer. He made a fool of a madman and he disproved his ideology. He did it while the whole world watched, and he did it without firing a single bullet.

Would Owens’ message have been heard had he been forced by his government to stay at home in protest, or would he just be remembered as another casualty of a political agenda? Would he be remembered at all?