It was 30 years ago this week we travelled to Washington with heavy hearts, the United States Olympic team that wasn’t.

There were 466 American athletes and our United States Olympic Committee staff and delegation with nowhere to go.

In the meantime, 5,512 athletes from 81 nations competed in Moscow in the hollow 1980 Olympic Games boycotted by the US and 65 other nations, persuaded  by the klutzes of the Carter Administration to stay home to punish the host Soviet Union for its incursion into Afghanistan in 1979.

These athletes, the best of our nation, had come to the nation’s capital resigned, finally, to the fact that they would not get their shot at an Olympic Dream after months of uncertainty.

Of that squad, 219 of them would never get another chance to make a future Olympic team, their dreams dying in the embers of a fire that proved to be one of the biggest mistakes ever in using sport and athletes as political pawns.

The USOC, mindful of the achievements and bludgeoned hopes of this team, was in the process of spending almost a million dollars to bring the team to Washington for five days of recognition and events designed to lift their spirits. Our modest-sized USOC staff (Baaron Pittenger, Jerry Lace, Larry McCollum, Dennis Keegan, Bob Mathias, Bob Paul and myself) and leadership (President Bob Kane, Executive Director F. Don Miller) created the junket so that the athletes, if only for one day, would garner the recognition of the nation.

During that week, there was little talk of the Games going on in Moscow, no live television in the United States, and little in the newspapers of the day. No Americans were allowed in Moscow for the Games, save for a few sport officials who were ordered to leave after the Opening Ceremony on July 19

Not in Washington with us was the US swimming team, which was staging its own meet in order to compare American times to the clocking in Moscow, a form of revenge that was well-meant, but meaningless.

On a hot July 30 morning on the steps of the Capitol, we watched and heard President Carter thank the athletes for their sacrifice, telling them it would be significant in the effort to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and to have gone to Moscow would have validated the USSR’s aggression. When Carter departed, the American athletes, one by one, mounted the steps to receive special medals commissioned and paid for by the USOC, from its officers and sport leaders, medals finally in 2007 recognised by the Congress of the United States as Congressional Gold Medals, the highest and most distinguished civilian award of our nation.

Before the medals presentation, the athletes heard emotional presentations from track and field great Madeline Manning Mims and pentathlete Bob Nieman, with emcee Donna de Varona. News reports still exist that President Carter handed out the medals, which is totally untrue. the team had to be convinced to stand when the President appeared that morning, told by then USOC Treasurer William E. Simon, to respect the office, if not the man’s decision to keep them from Moscow.

After a motorcade parade through Washington, the team was hosted at the White House for a barbeque on the South Lawn, capping off a week of special events that included a mammoth outing at Smokey Glen Farm near Gaithersburg, hosted by sponsor Levi Strauss, a nighttime tour of the historic monuments, an evening performance at the Ford Theatre, a special reception at the Smithsonian, a parade and concert at the US Marine Barracks and a special evening at the Kennedy Center with entertainers including Andy Gibb, Patti LaBelle, the Lennon Sisters, Jamie Farr, Irene Cara, and master of ceremonies Leonard Nemoy.

The swimming team came a week later, August 4-6, for its own celebration and parties. When they left Washington, this team, even today denied Olympic team status by the International Olympic Committee and officially unrecognised, feels the pain and bitterness of that boycott.

"There was really a tremendous amount on ineptness in the execution of the boycott," said a noted author of a book on the events, "it reflected both an ignorance of the international sporting structure, the way international sport works and very poor political analysis and judgment by the Carter Administration."

Years later, 1984 Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling gold medalist Jeff Blatnick (pictured), who was on that ’80 team, told a story that startles me even now. He was on an airplane, flying from Bismarck, ND, to Minneapolis and came upon President Carter, seated in the first-class cabin.

"As soon as the plane gets up in the air and levels off, he gets up and starts saying, ‘Hi’ to everybody," recalls Blatnick. "I say to the person next to me, I wonder how this is going to be. He gets to me, I go ‘President Carter, I have met you before, I am an Olympian.’

"He looks at me and says, ‘Were you on the 1980 hockey team?’ I say, ‘No sir, I’m a wrestler, on the summer team.’.

"He says, ‘Oh, that was a bad decision, I’m sorry.’"

The estimable journalist Alan Abrahamson of the Los Angeles Times and Universal Sports, penned this story in 2005, which included another statement about the boycott by former USOC Chairman and 1984 Olympic Games czar Peter Ueberroth.

"Boycotts don’t work. They only hurt athletes. That’s their only value - if people want to call that value. That’s been proven time and time again," said Ueberroth, whose superb ’84 Games had to survive a vengeful boycott by the Soviet Bloc.

IOC President Jacques Rogge, who saw his native Belgium go to Moscow, told Abrahamson: "People have realised that boycotts are not helpful. To the contrary - people who call for a boycott are shooting their own foot."

Tell all this to those 466 athletes who have largely been forgotten over the last three decades. The boycott killed their dreams and ended many of their careers and almost bankrupted the USOC, which had endured the worst of the pressure and nasty political machinations out of Washington while being forced into the boycott. And it almost killed the Olympic Games until Ueberroth and his team staged the ’84 Games without the Soviets and their marionettes and rescued the Movement.

As we transported the 1980 Olympians to the Washington airports, I recall seeing some of the most heart-tugging moments of my long career with the USOC. Tearful farewells by athletes who were denied their biggest dreams, and then they went their ways into the next chapter of their lives. The USOC, even now, has never formally staged an event to recognise this special Olympic team that isn’t, and this would be a good time.

In fact, this team should be in the US Olympic Hall Of Fame as soon as possible. There is a category in the Hall of Fame marked "Contributor",  where this team as a whole, deserves to be enshrined. What Olympic Team in our history contributed more? And, shouldn’t the organisation that bowed to withering political pressure and threats from Washington and stayed home from the most important event of its core mission now find a singular way to honor these men and women?

The IOC should step up and recognise all of the 65 teams that were forced to stay away from Moscow, and somehow show these athletes they meant something for their sacrifice. On October 27, we will induct the noble 1980 U.S. Olympic women’s volleyball team into the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame. This star-crossed team lived and trained in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center in preparation for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

In addition, this was the first "national team in residence" experiment in Olympic sport in the United States, with all team members, coaches and staff moving to Colorado Springs to live together and train on a full-time basis after finishing fifth at the 1978 World Championships. Its dream was shattered with the Moscow Olympic boycott, but a handful of players remained to win a silver medal at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, losing to China in the gold medal game.

Coached by Dr. Arie Selinger thirty years ago, the team of Janet Baier, Carolyn Becker, Rita Crockett, Patty Dowdell, Laurie Flachmeier, Debbie Green, Flo Hyman, Laurel Brassey, Debbie Landreth, Diane McCormick, Terry Place and Sue Woodstra was considered a favorite to win the volleyball gold medal in Moscow.

So were many other great US  athletes during that long ago summer of 1980, like world gymnastics champion Kurt Thomas, basketball stars Carol Blazejowski, Isiah Thomas and Bill Hanzlik, swimmer Craig Beardsley, and scores of others who will never know what might have been.

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.