SPORTS AND SOCIETY 509
dictates of the federal government and the parliament, but rather are in
charge of their own aff airs and make their own decisions.... The federal
government shall not exert pressure or threaten sanction, as is done in
other countries. Yet it expects that sport will come to understand the
existential demands of our people and the necessities of our alliance.”^42
In a sibylline way, the Chancellor also explained that, if the NOC were
to decide in favor of participating in the Games, the government “would
not exercise any coercion, rescind any passports, or prevent anyone from
using part of his vacation time for the Games.”^43 In fact, however, the
federal government had considered using such measures ultima ratio as
a way to exert infl uence just prior to this point, but it came to the conclu-
sion that it would not be legally possible to do so.^44
In the end, the NOC voted on 15 May 1980 with fi fty-nine to forty votes
in favor of boycotting the Games. The fact that Germany—together with
Norway—stood alone in Western Europe with this stance created trou-
ble for both Willi Daume and Helmut Schmidt, but for diff erent reasons:
Daume’s hopes of becoming IOC president were completely dashed, and
Helmut Schmidt had to defend himself against accusations coming from
the domestic side, and especially within his own party, that he was blindly
loyal to the United States. Most proponents of the boycott came from the
conservative milieu. This not only included the CDU/CSU, but also the
national organizations for equestrian sports, fencing, and sailing, which
were considered to be quite conservative as opposed to the handball and
swimming associations.^45 The riders in many other states, including Brit-
ain, also stayed at home, as did many sailing competitors, even though
their respective NOCs had not boycotted the Games. A demonstration
that was held in Dortmund on 21 April 1980 under the motto “Olympia
lebt” (The Olympics Are Alive) was intended to function as an athlete
protest against the boycott. But it ultimately came to resemble a peace
demonstration at the time in terms of style and audience, replete with the
support of the German Communist Party. The Ministry of the Interior saw
the planned demonstration as a sign of the “apolitical emotionality of a
considerable number of our athletes.”^46 The Olympic fencing champion
and later the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB) and IOC Pres-
ident Thomas Bach spoke out decidedly in favor of participating in the
Moscow Games in his role as speaker of the national team’s athletes. He
also later complained that the boycott “didn’t accomplish anything.”^47 At
any rate, the boycott did force the government in Moscow to explain to its
own people why one-third of the sports world had boycotted the Games.^48
The deep cleft that had been forming between politics and sport since
1980 was clear to see in the attacks that Willi Daume launched at what
he perceived to be the dishonest information policy of the federal gov-