As a community that hosts U.S. Winter Olympic teams either headquartered or training here — including USA Luge, USA Bobsled & Skeleton, U.S. Biathlon and USA Nordic — we see the Olympic spirit every day in these athletes. We’re proud to call them “our” athletes.

For that reason, we were taken aback by the United States government’s Dec. 6 announcement to diplomatically boycott the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, China.

Although it is a different kind of boycott, we’re reminded of other boycotts in Olympic history.

There was the American-led boycott of the 1980 Olympic Summer Games in Moscow, protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, in which 65 countries refused to compete. In response, the Soviet Union led a boycott of the 1984 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles, in which 14 countries refused to compete.

In December 1935, there was talk of an American boycott of the 1936 Olympics in Germany — which hosted the Winter and Summer games — protesting the racial persecutions of the Nazis. While the U.S. did send teams to compete, some athletes refused to go — performing their own personal protests.

The 2022 U.S. boycott is for diplomats and does not include athletes, but we still think it goes against the grain of the Olympic spirit, as was pointed out by Chinese officials earlier this week.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters the boycott “seriously violates the principle of political neutrality of sports established by the Olympic Charter and runs counter to the Olympic motto ‘more united.'”

We certainly agree with the Biden administration that it needs to take a stance on China’s trade and political conflicts, especially the human rights accusations which some U.S. politicians have called genocide against the Muslim Uyghurs in the northwest Xinjiang province.

“U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang, and we simply can’t do that,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during the Dec. 6 briefing.

Yet we’re saddened to see this stance taken at the Olympics, a time when the focus should be on sports, not politics. President Joe Biden is using the Olympics as a stage for political protest, and that is not fair to our U.S. athletes, who have spent years preparing for these games.

On Dec. 9, 2019, the United Nations General Assembly was focusing on the world’s athletes when it unanimously passed a resolution calling for a truce during the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. With that action, it was separating sports and politics. The resolution asked nations to respect the Olympic Truce from seven days before the start of the Olympic Games in July 2020 until seven days after the Paralympic Games.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach thanked the UN for its support.

“In our fragile world, we see our shared values and principles challenged in many ways, not only in the international community but also in sport,” Bach said. “The IOC is fully committed to preserving and strengthening these values and principles of respect for the rule of law, solidarity and political neutrality. But our commitment is not enough. We depend on the support of you, the governments, for our mission and our neutrality.”

The consensus for the Olympic Truce resolution included future hosts of the Olympics, such as the winter games in Beijing, China in 2022 and summer games in Paris, France in 2024.

Mingling with our U.S. Olympians and hopefuls on the luge, bobsled, skeleton, biathlon, ski jumping and Nordic combined teams as they regularly train in Lake Placid, we’re reminded of the Olympic spirit we felt in 1980 when the entire world came together in peaceful competition for the XIII Olympic Winter Games here in the Adirondacks.

Americans viewed the U.S. “Miracle on Ice” hockey win over the Soviet Union in 1980 as a Cold War win against the invaders of Afghanistan. Yet the players were only focused on their sport; they didn’t feel the political ramifications until after the games. This should always be the case.

We certainly wish our U.S. Olympians the best in Beijing this February, with or without diplomatic support.