It began as a sort of wind shear, a sudden gust, on an otherwise unremarkable day, but it grew into a violent storm that almost destroyed the Olympic Games.
 
On this day, 30 years ago - January 4, 1980.
 
During a speech to the United States, President Jimmy Carter voiced the first hint of a US boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow in retaliation for the startling invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union on December 23, 1979.

"Although the United States would prefer not to withdraw from the Olympic Games scheduled in Moscow this summer, the Soviet Union must realise that its continued aggressive actions will endanger both the participation of athletes and the travel to Moscow by spectators who would normally wish to attend the Olympic Games," said Carter. 

By January 20, on "Meet The Press", Carter announced that he would not let American athletes participate in Moscow unless the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler hinted at denying American athletes passports for Moscow after suddenly waking to the fact that the US Government could not technically order the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to stay home. The Administration also proposed that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) move the Games from Moscow to another city.

But it was on January 23, that Carter dropped the hammer.

"I have notified the US Olympic Committee that with Soviet invading forces in Afghanistan, neither the American people nor I will support sending an Olympic team to Moscow."

The next day, the US House of Representatives voted 386-12 to support Carter's call.

The USOC, deeply troubled and split by divisions among its member groups and athletes, went to Lake Placid for the 1980 Olympic Winter Games and enjoyed the brief, brilliant gift of seeing its ice hockey team defeat the Soviets in the Olympic semi-finals and then win the gold medal, completing the "Miracle on Ice" (pictured).

But, on April 12, 1980, the USOC voted to stay home and not send a team to Moscow, following an impassioned speech in Colorado Springs to its House of Delegates by Vice President Walter Mondale and painful support from USOC President William E. Simon, who told his colleagues that they must support the President of the United States in his call for the boycott since it was an issue of "national security".

The Carter team convinced 60 other nations to sit it out in Moscow, hundreds of American athletes saw their careers and Olympic dreams end forever, the USOC nearly went bankrupt, the Games went on, and the Soviet Union won 195 medals in a lopsided orgy of success that was repeated in Los Angeles four years later by the USA when the Soviets and 14 other nations returned the favour with their own boycott.

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics attracted 140 nations nonetheless, and turned into a huge financial success, establishing a blueprint for corporate support and success for future Games, and four years later, the world returned to the 1988 Games in Seoul and ushered in a new era of prosperity and popularity for the worldwide Olympic Movement.

The USOC, which had taken a gutsy step to assure the LA Olympics against a shortfall with a commitment of $25 million (£15 million) it did not have, gained a huge financial windfall from the surplus of the Games and regained its health and stability.

Much has changed since that fateful day three decades ago in the Olympic world.

Soviet armed forces finally fled Afghanistan on February 15, 1989, and the Berlin Wall crumbled on November 9 in that same year.

America has not hosted the Games since 2002 and has seen two of its most famed cities, New York and Chicago, defeated in attempts to host the world's most visible and important sports event since 2005.

The USA has become a winter Olympic power, and our summer Olympic teams have won the medal race in Atlanta, Sydney and Beijing.

There is no Soviet Union or East Germany to compete with.

And, in 39 days, the U.S. Olympic Team will enter the Opening Ceremony in Vancouver, followed three weeks later by the US Paralympic Games team. World-class athletes with disabilities will enjoy the same brilliant spotlight.

There will be a US Olympic women's ice hockey team seeking its own Miracle against powerful Canada on its home ice.

The coach of that USA team of women is Mark Johnson, a hero of the 1980 victory against the Soviets in Lake Placid with two goals.

Russia will host the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in its resort city of Sochi. London will host the 2012 Olympic Games, the first time the city has been the host since it welcomed the post-war world to the resumption of the Games in 1948.

It might have been different now had good people and events not stepped up in the days after January 4, 1980, to save the Games and the future for the world's best athletes.

Mike Moran was the chief communications officer of the USOC for nearly 25 years before retiring in 2003. In 2002 he was awarded with the USOC's highest award, the General Douglas MacArthur Award. He worked on New York's unsuccessful bid to host the 2012 Olympics and is now director of communications for the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation.