Comparisons To The Olympic Games
Media on both sides of the Iron Curtain frequently compared the results of 1984 Summer Olympics and the Friendship Games. Over sixty Friendship Games results would have secured medals at the Olympic games. East Bloc athletes outperformed Olympic winners in 20 of 41 track-and-field events and eleven of 29 swimming events. Had Li Yuwei, who won the 1984 Olympic gold medal in 50 metre running target shooting, obtained the same score in the Friendship Games, he would have only placed sixth. Indeed, in events such as weightlifting or wrestling, the Friendship Games had almost all of the top athletes of the time.
However, some journalists noted that making such comparisons was unjustified, because of differing conditions and equipment. For example, Marlies Göhr's result of 10.95 in women's 100 metre run was slightly better than Evelyn Ashford's winning time of 10.97 at the 1984 Olympics, but when the two met head-to-head a week after the Friendship Games, Ashford was much faster than Göhr and set the new world record. Similarly, Eastern Bloc results in track cycling were better than Olympic results, but Friendship Games cyclists competed on an indoor wooden track, while the Olympic events took place on an outdoor concrete track. "It is like saying Carl Lewis was faster than Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali would have beaten Joe Louis or Secretariat would have outrun Man o' War", Sam Lacy of the Afro-American concluded.
The comparisons also had political significance. While Friendship Games organizers repeatedly assured the press that their event was not an "alternative Olympics", presumably to avoid punitive IOC measures, Soviet state-run media often alluded to such comparisons. The TASS agency declared that the Eastern Bloc's games were a "major event in the Olympic year", while the Sovietsky Sport newspaper described the Games as the "main event of the Olympic quadrennium". Marat Gramov, head of the Soviet Olympic Committee, said that the "socialist nations remain faithful to the task of strengthening the unity of the Olympics movement", while describing the Los Angeles Games as full of "chauvinism and mass psychosis".
When asked about the Friendship Games, Monique Berlioux, then director of the IOC, said she had "no reaction whatsoever" to the competition.
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