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In Los Angeles, the announcement of the Soviet pullout from this summer's Games hit with earthquake force. Many of the 1,200 employees of the L.A.O.O.C. heard the news on car radios as they pulled into parking spaces at the headquarters building, a former Hughes helicopter plant nicknamed "the hangar." Inside, they were ordered not to discuss the situation with anyone and no outsiders were allowed in the building unless they had previous appointments. Mayor Thomas Bradley, speaking by phone from New York, where he too was attending the torch-carrying ceremony, pronounced himself "bitterly disappointed." He and other officials repeatedly stressed the wan hope that the Soviets could be persuaded to reconsider; Bradley hinted that he might undertake a mission to Moscow. The dominant reaction, however, was that, Soviets or no Soviets, the Games would go on. Said L.A.O.O.C. Executive Vice President Harry Usher, I speaking to employees in the hangar late in the day: "These Games not only will happen, but will happen with taste and style and will be something that everyone will be proud of."
Nonetheless, the absence from the Los Angeles Olympics of such Soviet world-record holders as Pole Vaulter Sergei Bubka, High Jumper Tamara Bykova and Swimmer Vladimir Salnikov, and of the East German athletes who have come close to dominating women's track and field, will greatly diminish the luster of many events (see following story). True, the rivalry will be broader than in the 1980 Olympics, which drew athletes from only 81 nations to Moscow. Attendance at Los Angeles might equal, or even surpass, the high of 122 countries represented at the 1972 Games in Munich—though much depends on whether the black African nations boycott again (they are incensed because Zola Budd, a fleet middle-distance runner and native South African, may be allowed to compete as a British citizen). But, like the Soviet athletes who garnered the superficially staggering total of 197 gold, silver or bronze medals in the 1980 Summer Olympics, the winners in Los Angeles will be unable to boast that their feats were achieved against the toughest competition the world has to offer.
Will any Olympic athletes be able to make that boast again? Now that the precedent has been set, confirmed and intensified, worriers ask, can any host city be found that some group of nations might not want to boycott? Seoul, South Korea, already chosen by the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) as the site of the 1988 Summer Games, certainly would seem to offer a tempting target if East-West political tensions do not ease; it is the capital of a nation that the Soviet Union and many other Communist countries do not recognize. And will world-class athletes be willing to undergo the grueling four-year grind of training for the Olympics, if they face a constant threat of having their chance to compete taken away at the last moment?