Carter's stain, and 'bad decision' will never wash off

April 12 passed by without a lot of fuss but 40 years ago it was the date of one of the more lamentable decisions involving sport and politicians and which had significant implications for New Zealand sportspeople.

It was when the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) bowed to the wishes of American president Jimmy Carter and decided to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.

That set in train a world-wide response boosted in New Zealand by the Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, a man who only a couple of years earlier had got himself deeply offside with his American allies by describing Carter as 'a peanut farmer'. Months later, in a classic display of irony, Muldoon would allow the 1981 Springbok tour to take place.

Mike Moran, only in the first year into his job as chief spokesman for the USOC – a position he held for another 23 years – remembered that day in Colorado Springs for Thesportsexaminer.com.

He recalled the decision being made that would deny 200 Americans and many others around the world the right to be called Olympians.

The vote on the question of the boycott was passed 1704 to 697 and was a decision that almost put the USOC out of business.

Carter, who would be tipped out of office later in the year by Ronald Reagan, made his call on January 20. But on April 12, the USOC was addressed by Vice President Walter Mondale and the USOC treasurer William E. Simon, who also happened to be a former Secretary of the Treasury.

Following the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Carter wanted the Olympics to be moved from Moscow to another venue or to be postponed or cancelled if the Soviet Union didn't withdraw its troops.

Mondale's contribution to the USOC meeting was to tell them: "History holds its breath for what is at stake is no less than the future security of the civilized world. If one nation can be subjugated by Soviet aggression, is any sovereign nation truly safe from that fate?... If the Soviet lunge toward the most strategic oil-rich spot on earth fails to unite us, what will?"

In today's world, Mondale's effort would be seen as a classic response to the 'Reds under the bed' Cold War that was even then beginning to peter out.

But Simon, supposedly representing the best interests of the Olympic sportsmen and women of the US said: "It is somewhat incredulous that a group of mature persons whom I consider to be among the most patriotic of Americans can seriously discuss defying the President of the United States on a national security issue."

Carter left no stone unturned to achieve his demand, a call which flew in the face of the International Olympic Committee charter that said all national Olympic committees should resist all pressures whether political, religious or economic. Even worse the USOC's constitution said no member could 'deny or threaten to deny any amateur athlete the opportunity to compete in the Olympic Games.'

So Carter pulled out the old national security line to pour the pressure on. Olympic sponsors were then heavied to not make key payments unless the USOC backed the boycott.

Top-ranked USOC officials were threatened with reductions in their service entitlements in retirement.

An event was organised on July 26, 1980, for the American athletes and at the end of a visit by Carter, who thanked them for their sacrifice, the athletes were given a special medal that had been paid for by the USOC. Those medals were in 2007 given Congressional gold medal status by Congress, the highest civilian award in the US.

Moran said some years later, the 1984 Olympic Greco-Roman gold medalist Jeff Blatnick, who had been one of the 1980 team members, found himself on an internal flight in the US and sharing the first-class cabin with Carter.

Blatnick told him: "As soon as the plane gets up in the air and levels off, he [Carter] gets up and starts saying hi to everybody. I say to the person next to me, 'I wonder how this is going to be?' He gets to me, I go, 'President Carter, I have met you before, I am an Olympian.' He looks at me and says, 'Were you on the 1980 hockey team?' I say, 'No sir, I 'm a wrestler, on the summer team.' He said, 'Oh, that was a bad decision, I'm sorry.'"

There was some karma, albeit less significant, for the Olympians, however. It had been scheduled that Carter would run a leg of the torch relay ahead of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta near his home town of Plains, Georgia.

But a group of 1980 US Olympians approached Carter representatives and advised that if he was to touch an Olympic torch or wear official clothing, or even take part in the run, they would have a 'major retaliatory response'.

Carter found something else to do on the day concerned.

His presidency may forever be stained by the Iranian storming of the US Embassy in Teheran and the subsequent
hostage crisis, but his treatment of Olympic athletes won't be far behind.

Bender puts Cup behind him and settles in to France

Retired All Black Ben Smith has put the disappointment of the All Blacks' third place at last year's Rugby World Cup behind him and says on reflection that the event had been very competitive.

Now playing his rugby in France, at Pau, although now in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, Smith told The Rugby Paper, "I thought the 2019 World Cup was very competitive, with Japan doing so well and so many other teams playing really good rugby.

"World Cups are really tough and even when we won it in 2015, I remember we were probably lucky to beat a good South Africa team in the semifinal. Things might not have gone our way at the end of that game, and then you look back to 2011 and the final against France when we had a wee bit of luck as well.

"That's what I took from World Cups because the margins are so small between going forwards or going home.

"The thing I love about rugby is you can never take what's happened before as an indicator, it's all about what you do on the day. I remember how people were giving the French stick going into that 2011 final but they played out of their skins and nearly beat the All Blacks in Auckland, so I enjoy that aspect of rugby because it means you
can never get complacent," he said.

Smith had his disappointment in Japan when not included for the playoffs games but said he still had to contribute to the preparation of the side.

"Selection was in someone else's hands and I had to just get on with it. The way I look at it, I was still lucky to be involved in a World Cup and although it didn't go how we wanted, I still managed to contribute and to bow out with two tries and a big over Wales was nice," he said.

Smith acknowledged England's effort in winning their semifinal with the All Blacks.

"Test matches against England are always special and I played in a fair few, but most people who watched that game will say they played better than us and deserved their win.

"The good thing about rugby in a World Cup is that whoever turns up on the day and plays the best rugby gets to go forward in the competition – and England well and truly did that in that semifinal," he said.

Smith is sharing the lockdown in France with Highlanders and All Blacks teammate Luke Whitelock and his family outside of Pau because there was more space for their children to roam around.

He said there was a good core of New Zealanders at Pau with Tom Taylor, Colin Slade and Daniel Ramsay still playing and Conrad Smith and Paul Tito on the coaching team.

Smith said he hadn't been tempted to stay in New Zealand to try and get 100 Test caps.

"I thought now was a good time to move on. I was 33 and at some point, you want a different challenge. I saw coming to Pau as fulfilling that challenge and a chance to spend some good time with my family after spending so many years on the international circuit in Super Rugby and with the All Blacks. I really enjoyed my time in New Zealand but just felt it was the right time to do something else," he said.

It helped that Bordeaux, Biarritz, Andorra and Spain were all close to his Pau base.

Lions legend says Twickenham Test a 'nonsense'

British & Irish Lions rugby great Willie-John McBride has poured Guinness all over Warren Gatland's suggestion to have a Lions Test against the All Blacks at Twickenham next year.

A former captain of the Lions, he led them to a series win over South Africa in 1974 on his fifth Lions tour, McBride told The Rugby Paper such a game was 'completely alien to the ethos and history of the Lions'.

"For the Lions to play a home Test match is nonsense," he said.

The Lions have only ever played once in Britain, against Argentina before the 2005 New Zealand tour.

McBride took issue with Gatland's suggestion the Test could generate $NZ10 million.

"That's the problem with the world of professional sport at the moment. It's all about money, not about sport. Therefore this [Test] is going to be played purely for money. It would be meaningless," he said.

McBride said looking at the state rugby was in at the moment it was obvious lessons should have been learnt from the mess the game had become.

"The ethos of the game has been damaged so much. It used to be run by rugby people. Now it's run by (supposed) financial wizards. The grassroots game is dying, or it certainly is in Ireland.

"If they are going to have a Lions, then have a proper Lions tour. They keep saying they can't squeeze the Lions into the curriculum once every four years yet they always seem to find room for some stupid idea to fill Twickenham.

"Surely it is possible to have a proper Lions tour. I think it's scandalous that the Premiership clubs in England are dictating the future of the sport.

"The game has gone back since the advent of professionalism. It's a mixture of Rugby League, Rugby Union and American football. A lot of it is quite boring. I played in my share of boring games but there would always be a spark," he said.

Another Lions captain, Phil Bennett [to New Zealand in 1977] said he also believed the Lions should play their games overseas and while he saw himself as old-fashioned, playing away was what made the Lions unique.

But at the same time, he saw merit in Gatland's idea, especially if one million pounds of any gate money was donated to the National Health Service.

NRL needs to get real

As the National Rugby League (NRL)
try to show they’ve surpassed the rest of the world and found a way to hold back the Covid-19 tide, others in the sports world are taking a more realistic view of life beyond lockdowns and viral speculation (pun intended).

It’s as if NRL officials are living in a bubble of ignorance, determined that they are going to show the world they’ve got a game that can withstand the fractures that their sport will impose on its participants.

They should take a look at the view that esteemed Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke has put forward.

While acknowledging the sports world did need to get back to work he said it was desperation, more than anything else, that was starting to show in some organisations responses.

“Yet, with every day, its solutions for a return sound sillier, and its false hope does more damage.

“Ignore the leagues, mute the coaches and listen to the science. There is a realistic chance the sports world will be benched until 2021,” Plaschke said.

And so say all of us.

To quote a much loved New Zealand TV advertisement that takes the piss out of Australia to the NRL officials, “You must be dreaming, mate!”

The simple facts are that it is not only the need to find a vaccine to curb coronavirus but also understanding why people have an immunity to the virus and why, as has been seen in South Korea, people are suffering re-infection. Any testing of players through antibody testing couldn’t be applied because the Federal Drug Administration hadn’t approved testing.

Plaschke quoted Californian experts who said they would be lucky to have sport until Thanksgiving. That’s in November. He pointed to the Chinese Basketball Association authorities imposing, at the very minimum, a four-month shutdown – and they are supposed to be recovering from the virus!

Similarly, he made the point of why should it be sportspeople who get back to work first? When a vaccine was found who was to say athletes should be given priority treatment?

At least American fans had cried down a suggestion that baseball should be played in a quarantine bubble in Arizona. Something that would necessitate players being separated from their families for five months. But so strong was the public reaction the idea was quickly scotched.

As various sports pondered their future where the optimism should lie was in what he called, ‘the potential excitement in sports’ new realities.

From an American perspective, he asked: “Can you imagine a Super Bowl in April, maybe the week after baseball’s opening day and the week before the Masters? Or how about a college football season that runs concurrently with college hoops, the basketball being playing during the week and the football on the weekends? What about a national championship football game on the Sunday in the middle of college basketball’s Final Four?”

Already, it appeared the 2020 baseball season was a goner, he said.

“The economic impact of the long-term shuttering of sports is tremendous and will be fought by officials from baseline to baseline, but on this field, science owns the scoreboard,” Plaschke said.”

“Sports will eventually be back, but this country is facing much more important issues right now. Cradle your glove, wear your jersey, enjoy the replays, and wait till next year,” he said.

That would appear to be the message that needs to get through to sports officials looking to push hard on returns. They should value the need for their athletes to be partners, fathers or mothers, sons or daughters first to ensure they can maintain their family connections when they are needed most rather than sacrificing them on the altar of Mammon for short-term, but unsustainable benefit.

Read Bill Plaschke's LA Times column here

Leitch worried Japan not building on Cup success

Former Chiefs No 8 and Japan captain Michael Leitch is concerned that not enough has been done to build on Japan's success in making last year's Rugby World Cup quarterfinals.

And that's not just the result of the Covid-19 pandemic shutting down the game around the world.

While there had been hints of a place for Japan in either the Rugby Championship or the Six Nations getting Japan to a place where that could happen, nothing has occurred to suggest that was still a possibility.

After all the hard work to reach that high point in their own World Cup, Leitch is concerned impetus has been lost.

He told Reuters, that for Japan to repeat their effort at the next World Cup in France in 2023, the Top League in Japan would have to change and there would have to be opportunities for the Brave Blossoms to get together to train.

"At the moment, it is a bit…I wouldn't say disorganised…but we are not focusing on the Japanese team at the moment," he said.

While there had been a goodwill move by the corporations owning Japan's clubs ahead of the World Cup to allow players more time to train with the national side that hadn't continued in the wake of the Cup.

On their schedule this year Japan will face New Zealand, England and Ireland and a lot was riding on those games, Leitch said.

"If we starting losing those Test matches then we could get back to only playing against tier two countries. There is a lot of pressure on us to keep playing well and to be competitive against those top tier one countries," he said.

Leitch was also disappointed that the Sunwolves had been cut out of Super Rugby because the side had been an opportunity to develop good Japanese players. He didn't know how else Japan could develop players.

While the Japan Rugby Union has said there will be a new league format for 2020-21, no detail had been presented.

It was important for Japan to start bringing through strong players and not to rely on foreign talent to strengthen the league.

"There needs to be a way where we promote Japanese rugby players and I think that is the next step we need to take," he said.

Leitch also hinted that once his playing career was over he could look to move into a role in the game's administration in Japan.

"I have a genuine passion for Japanese rugby and I can use my England and my Japanese to communicate with different unions," he said.

Leitch, 31, who has a coffee shop on Tokyo's outskirts, said that learning business management could be a key asset in pursuing that option.

Springboks' coaching team have noses to the grindstone

New Springboks coach Jacques Nienaber hasn't been hanging around wondering during the coronavirus pandemic.

The break in the Super Rugby season due to the virus has allowed Nienaber and his team to get plenty of analysis done on prospective opponents based on the limited footage available in the so-far truncated season.

Nienaber told supersport.com, "It's a strange time, I must say. It very quickly became part of life and it probably changes what normal will be going forward [in the future].

"It will be a time in history that we will remember how things have changed.

"From our side though, we are still busy. But the nice thing for me is that one side of coaching is the physical coaching on the field and the other side is the planning part.

"For us, nothing has changed. We are still planning as we would have done anyway.

"The only thing now is that we don't physically now have an alignment camp – we just did a virtual one with the Sharks over Skype and Microsoft Teams, which are one of our partners. We are quite lucky with that," he said.

The tough part of the work was not knowing if there would be anything at the end of all the planning.

"You plan for Test matches and at the moment nothing has been cancelled and everything is still going on.

"It is such a fluid stage that you planning might not be Scotland, but rather Georgia in the first game. Or it might be Argentina first game. We don't know. There are so many variables.

"The nice thing for us with rugby stopping is that in terms of analysis we are catching up. When the Six Nations were on, so were Super Rugby and we were focused on analysing Super Rugby performances. Because everything has stopped now, we are catching up to where everything has paused," he said.

The Springbok coaching team have been able to run alignment camps in South Africa with all teams except the Sharks, who missed the cut when the lockdown started while in Europe, assistant coach Felix Jones has been looking after the European-based players and had two camps with them before the lockdown.

"Every player was assessed, except the guys in Japan who we couldn't get to – we were planning to get to them in May. The first round of alignment camps has been down with everybody. In terms of that we are on par," he said.

Sports Roundup and Jock Edwards were made for each other

If you believe some of the published versions of the demise of Radio Sport, you would think 'sports radio' only had its origins in the 1980s.

The fact is a form of sports radio had been around since the late-1950s.

It ran on what was called the YC network out of the respective stations in the four main centres. At a few key times during the day, the National Programme would cross for half an hour of action, which was about the only time country listeners received a non-static version of the programme.

It ran during the summer months, and usually in conjunction with the Plunket Shield. No play on days between games then no Sports Roundup, as it was called.

The coverage wasn't confined to cricket. Tennis and softball enjoyed unprecedented access to their major tournaments and a level of interest that has never been regained.

Few were the people who didn't know who Onny Parun or Brian Fairlie was in tennis, or Kevin Herlihy, Dennis Cheyne, Peter Priddey, Paul Rogers, John Joyce or Basil McLean were in the softball ranks.

But it was centred around the cricket and the ability to flick from venue to venue when any action was occurring.

It is with that in mind that memories of Jock Edwards, who died this week, were evoked.

If there was one player with the ability to warrant a quick change of venue when he walked out to bat it was Edwards. He was one of a few players capable of giving the ball a nudge. Peter Coman had done it for Canterbury and Edwards maintained the momentum.

Famously, when selected for the New Zealand one-day side for the first time when it played in the Australian domestic competition during the 1960s-70s, Edwards, 20 years of age at the time, hooked a ball from fast man Dennis Lillee.

Lillee chirped him: "Where did you learn to hook, sonny?" to which Edwards replied, "From mugs like you!"

He didn't like to hang around when batting. In a time of defensive correctness above all else, he worked on the notion if the ball was there to be hit then it should be. He often joked in later years that his longest hit was a six hit out of his home ground at Trafalgar Park in Nelson, onto the back of a passing Nelson Transport truck which the driver discovered 110km later at Spring Creek, north of Blenheim.

His reputation made him a crowd favourite and he revelled in a side that had other big hitters like Lance Cairns and Wayne Hodgson.

Nelson and Pukekura Park in New Plymouth seemed to draw the best out of him.

Greg Chappell's 1977 Australian team learned that in Nelson when Edwards lined up against Lillee again, accompanied this time by Max Walker and Gary Gilmour. Having opened the first innings and scored 49 of CD's 156 in reply to Australia's 126, CD was left a target of 283 to win.

When he'd scored five Edwards retired hurt after a blow to his arm. But at 74-4, he had recovered sufficiently to join Peter Holland in a master class of attacking batting against left-arm spinner Ray Bright and leg-spinner Kerry O'Keefe.

They added 50 in 27 minutes, 100 in 52 minutes and 117 in 64 minutes before they were parted. Edwards took 13 runs off a Bright over to move to 97, adding two and then, when attempting to score the single that would have given him his maiden first-class century, he was given out lbw to Lillee. His 99 was scored in 86 minutes from 97 balls with one six and 18 fours.

Lillee proved the difference coming back to take 4-9 from his seven overs as CD fell 66 runs short.

That was sufficient to see Edwards selected for his Test debut which he marked by scoring 34 and 15 in the first Test and 51 and a duck in the second.

That elusive maiden century followed in the following season when he hit 115 against Otago.

In the 1980-81 season he enjoyed his most productive season with the bat hitting 679 runs at 56.59, a CD record that stood until Martin Crowe went berserk six years later while scoring 680 for CD during a total season's haul of 1348 runs at 103.72.

He played 92 first-class games, 67 of them for CD, scoring 4589 runs at 29.41. He hit five centuries and 25 half-centuries and had a top score of 177 not out.

Being a Nelsonian he was also part of their Hawke Cup history, hitting 1038 runs in 24 games at 37.07.

Not only was Edwards a drawcard for home fans, but he also upped the listening stats on Sports Roundup.