Olympic committee says no to GOP athlete boycott demands: ‘No diplomatic benefit’

FIRST ON FOX: The Olympic committee made clear its position on Friday following GOP calls for an athlete boycott in the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, telling lawmakers it has historically made “no diplomatic benefit.”

In a letter exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, Susanne Lyons, chair of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) board of directors detailed why the ban would only serve to hurt athletes. 

“An athlete boycott of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is not the solution to human rights or geopolitical issues,” she wrote. “The USOPC is opposed to athlete boycotts because they have been shown to negatively impact athletes while not effectively addressing global issues.”

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Lyons pointed to previous athlete bans by both the U.S. and Soviet Union in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War that she said proved ineffective.

In 1980, the U.S. led a multi-nation boycott and barred its athletes from attending the Moscow Summer Olympic Games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Some 65 nations participated in what would become the largest Olympic boycott to date.

“As a result, 461 American athletes – the balance of them teenagers and college students representing almost every U.S. state – qualified to compete in Moscow only to have the opportunity taken from them,” Lyons said. “Many never had the chance to compete at the Olympic Games again. 

“To make matters worse, their sacrifice had arguably no diplomatic benefit: The Soviet Union stayed in Afghanistan for another decade,” she argued. 

The Lyon’s letter was in response to GOP Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who called for…