By Josh Barr
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame athlete Edwin Moses will host Olympic Legacies – Remembered and Repurposed, a virtual Town Hall tonight, Tuesday, April 28, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Team USA’s boycott of the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games.
The Town Hall is open to the public and can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/EdwinMosesIcon2Icon.
The conversation will include discussions on the historic impact, physical impact, financial impact and psychological impact of the boycott, with members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team sharing their personal experiences. These stories are even more important now, Moses said, for athletes who were hoping to compete for Team USA at Tokyo 2020, only to have those Games postponed until 2021.
Moses told the Wall Street Journal that it is important for current athletes to know what the members of the 1980 team went through and give them “the opportunity to vent their frustations” on the delay.
Among the scheduled panelists and presenters are Anita DeFrantz, Lee Kemp and Ben Fields from the 1980 U.S. Olympic Team; volleyball player and five-time Olympian Kerri Walsh-Jennings; water polo gold medalist Kaleigh Gilchrist; basketball administrator Dan Gavitt, whose father, Dave, was the 1980 U.S. Olympic Basketball Coach; and Christopher Liedel, chief executive officer of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
