COLOMBIA
1982
Politics, the eternal bane of sport, reared its ugly head again at the end of the
seventies and beginning of the eighties. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was
the pretext used by the USA to encourage a boycott of the Moscow Olympics in
1980.
However, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Australia and all the European communist countries turned a blind
eye to the US initiative, so as far as basketball was concerned the boycott was a total fiasco. The
absence of the USA was noticed, especially due to the lack of a USA-USSR match, but apart from
this the rest of the teams maintained the expected standard.
The precedent of this boycott boded ill for the future of the tournament and FIBA took steps to
ensure that this would not affect the world championship, scheduled to take place in August
1982. Borislav Stankovic, the FIBA general secretary, received the promise from Yugoslavia that
they would attend the tournament and moved quickly to sound out the rest of the communist
countries to see if their presence in Colombia could be assured. Czechoslovakia decided to wait
for the decision of the USSR but then the Soviets gave the green light to the tournament with the
desire to gain revenge against Yugoslavia for the affront of denying them the Olympic gold in front
of their public two years before.
The right of the reigning world champions to enter the competition directly in the final phase was
removed and the participation returned to 13 teams.
The Olympic silver medallists, Italy, provided the only scare in the run up to the competition. Their
recently created Association of Clubs bowed to the pressure of their sponsors and refused to
allow the participation of their best players. The Federation then declined to send a team and
their place was filled by Spain, fourth place in the Olympics.
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FUNDACIÓN PEDRO FERRÁNDIZ
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP