It is a possibility.
You wonder if the Chairman of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Organizing Committee, Casey Wasserman, is having some sleepless nights because of tariffs and a shift in the geopolitical structure. Last summer, in France, the Paris Olympic Games had 203 National Olympic Committees with about 10,500 athletes competing in 32 sports. How many of the leaders of countries, impacted by American tariffs which include Canada, Colombia, Mexico and China or threatened in other ways such as Panama and Denmark or being insulted on the world stage will bring up the word boycott as in not sending athletes to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics. But it is not just the 2028 Los Angeles games that could be threatened.
There is a problem in Italy with the 2026 Winter Games. There are renovations that are taking place at a century-old sliding track in northern Italy. But there is no guarantee that the track will be done. Lake Placid, New York has been selected as the “Plan B” site for bobsled, luge and skeleton events if there renovations are not completed in time for the Italian event. Would countries consider boycotting the United States and sit out those 2026 events? Los Angeles is no stranger to an Olympic boycott. On Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. American President Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games because the Soviet Union refused to leave Afghanistan. A good number of western countries followed Carter’s lead. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries did not go to the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games in retaliation for the 1980 Moscow Games boycott. The Carter initiative was a failure. As of now, there is no indication that there will be a boycott of Los Angeles 2028 but the Olympics is a political stage.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
Casey Wasserman
