With so much excitement around the Beijing games next month, I can’t imagine China possibly not wanting to participate in the Olympics. But that was exactly the case, not so long ago.

The call he will never forget came for Peter Ueberroth in the middle of the night on May 12, 1984, over a crackling phone line from Beijing. It carried the news he believed would determine the fate of the Olympics, not just the Games he was working to organize in Los Angeles that summer but all the ones beyond.

At the other end of the line was Charles Lee, the man he had sent to persuade the Chinese to send their team to the Olympics for the first time. Ueberroth, the leader of the Los Angeles organizing committee, was asking China to defy a Soviet Union-led boycott that was announced four days earlier. The Soviets said the boycott would keep 100 countries away from the 鈥�84 Games. If the Soviets succeeded, Ueberroth said flatly, 鈥渨e were done.鈥�

Salvation came when Lee called and told Ueberroth, 鈥淭hey鈥檙e coming.鈥�

As the world prepares for the Beijing Games in August, that moment is all but lost in the history of the Olympics, when the winds shifted and carried the Games away from a political bludgeon in the cold war to the combination of athletic and commercial success they have become since.

Via China鈥檚 Defiance of the 1984 Boycott Helped Transform the Olympic Games - NYTimes.com