Abstract
The article examines an often discussed subject of the extent to which politics influence sport and particularly the most important sport event - the Olympic Games. It concentrates primarily on boycotts of the Olympic Games as the most prominent political instrument from Berlin 1936 to Sochi 2014.
Due to the possible range of the text, the article treats the subject more as a summary with the aim to introduce what was the impulse for the boycotts, how and whether boycotts evolved and what was their impact. Increased attention is paid to XI.
Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 and the trio of boycotts in the late seventies and eighties, i.e. the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976, Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984.