IT was the opening week of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and Sebastian Coe, who had yet to compete, was due in Red Square for a photocall.
But the front page lead we filed from the Soviet capital on July 21 made only passing reference to the triple world record holder.
Coe was upstaged by an Italian gay rights demonstrator, Enzo Franconi. Leader of Fuori (United Front of Italian Revolutionary Homosexuals) he was intent on chaining himself to the fence beside Lenin's tomb. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, dozens of men in powder blue Armani suits emerged. Each clutched what appeared to be a small black folding umbrella. In reality it was a two-way radio, for these were plain clothes police, ubiquitous in the Soviet capital. They pounced on the Italian, bundling him into a car with clinical efficiency.
But the photographers were instantly on the button. They were manhandled by the blue-suited agents. One of them was bundled to the ground and kicked, despite some shouting that they were here to photograph sport. Veteran Mirror photographer Monty Fresco described how his camera was grabbed and his film removed. Numerous other snappers were also relieved of their film and some were briefly detained. By the conclusion, we observed some 100 suited thugs in the square.
Later, when we attempted to file our story (in the days before mobile phones and laptops) listening telephone operators repeatedly pulled the plug after a few sentences of our phone call to this paper. The attempts to prevent transmission were circumvented when we found an unmanned telex.
A fearless serial demonstrator, Franconi had been protesting about two men detained under article 121 of the Soviet penal code which decreed homosexuality an offence, punishable by five years' imprisonment. He'd been deported when he conducted a similar demo in Tehran after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. And in 1981 he handcuffed himself to the railings of the Canadian embassy in Rome.
Now, with a global athletics event back in Russia and another Olympics (the Winter Games) scheduled for Sochi next year, there have been attempts, notably from comedian Stephen Fry, to orchestrate a boycott in protest at continuing repressive Russian attitudes to homosexuality.
I share Fry's distaste for the Russian regime's attitude, but why should sport be first over the parapet? Perhaps more pertinently, Fry should call for an arts boycott - no touring invitations to Russian orchestras, ballet troupes, and art exhibitions, or even employment of Russian artists, until Russian human rights attitudes are in accord with those of more liberal nations.
Why should sport suffer to fight this cause, worthy though it is?
In 1980, British sport showed exactly where it stood on the issue of fighting other peoples' battles. US President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher urged a Moscow Olympic boycott, because of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. There was no discussion of a trade embargo. That would have financial implications. So Carter denied a generation of American youth their appearance on the greatest sporting platform. Thatcher was forced to drop a plan to seize athletes' passports, but was still partially successful.
A few establishment UK sports (sailing, hockey, equestrianism, shooting) kow-towed and did not send teams to Moscow, but most British sport ignored Thatcher, who remains despised by those whose dreams died at her behest. Among those was Scotland's newly-crowned world small bore rifle champion, Alistair Allan, who later won silver but lost the Olympic chance at his peak, having just set the world record, a maximum 600 out of 600.
Had athletics proved compliant, there would have been no Coe-Ovett 1500/800m victories; no 100m glory for Allan Wells; or decathlon triumph for Daley Thompson, all of which were denied the appearance of the Union flag or sound of the national anthem. Britain's first gold, in swimming by Duncan Goodhew, was celebrated by the playing of a piece by Russian composer Eduard Artemyev. Suffice to say, Lord Coe could not have stood before the Olympic movement with any credibility to plead London's right to host in 2012.
The Olympic charter states that sport is a human right and should be available to all, regardless of race, sex or sexual orientation. The movement has the right to deny a nation entry to the Games for any breach - but conspicuously never moved against nations with fundamentalist attitudes to the inclusion of women. There remains no prospect of the IOC moving against an offending host nation now, any more than there was for the 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin.
Boycotts don't work. Indeed, there is a case for considering the Moscow Olympics as a major influence in the fall of Communism, just as it is helping tear down the bamboo curtain, post Beijing 2008. The issue should be turned on its head. The most spectacular sports impact on human rights was in excluding South Africa from the global community until they renounced apartheid. Russia should be excluded from all international sport not only until gays are liberated, but until Russia's doping record is pro rata with the rest of the world.
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