Jimmy Carter led an Olympics boycott in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott was one part of a number of actions initiated by the United States to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan . Jimmy Carter . The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979 -- 1981 Iran hostage crisis , the 1979 energy crisis , the Three Mile Island nuclear accident , and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan . In response to the invasion , Carter ended détente , escalated the Cold War , and led the international boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow .