The Friendship Games or Friendship-84 (Russian: Дружба-84, Druzhba-84) was an international multi-sport event held between 2 July and 16 September 1984 in the Soviet Union and eight other socialist states which boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Although Friendship Games officials denied that the Games were to be a counter-Olympic event to avoid conflicts with the International Olympic Committee, the competition was often dubbed the Eastern Bloc's "alternative Olympics". Some fifty states took part in the competition. While the boycotting countries were represented by their strongest athletes, other states sent their reserve teams, consisting of athletes who failed to qualify for Los Angeles.
Read more about Friendship Games: Background, Participating Nations, Opening Ceremony, Summary, Medal Table, Comparisons To The Olympic Games, Aftermath, Venues
Famous quotes containing the words friendship and/or games:
“A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me.”
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