The politics of boycotting Olympic games goes back some time: as early as 1964 the International Olympic Commission banned South Africa from the Tokyo games for its racial segregation. In 1976 nearly thirty African countries pulled out of the games in protest over the acceptance of New Zealand (who had been playing in the apartheid South Africa.) So in terms of timing, the Soviet Union’s decision to invade Afghanistan just months before the Olympic games in Moscow was most inopportune.

On this day, March 21, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced to Congress he and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were starting a boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games and calling on other nations to follow.

Carter’s and Thatcher’s move was a semi-bluff: they did not have the real authority to prevent athletes from the their countries from participating, although Carter did threaten to personally revoke the citizenship of anyone who went to Moscow for the games. Thatcher only was able to restrict the use of the Union Jack for the British team. But in the end some 60 countries participated in the boycott. Four years later, in response, Moscow boycotted the Olympic games in Los Angeles.