In the hours before Michelle Ford won gold at the Moscow 1980 Olympics, the Australian swimmer read through some fan mail and found one letter that still brings her to tears.

“I start reading them through and there it was: ‘You’re a traitor ... if you stand on those blocks tonight, you’re a traitor to this country’,” she recalls.

Ford, then just 18, did stand on the starting blocks that night in Moscow, and went on to blitz a formidable 800m freestyle final field featuring East Germans at the height of the country’s state-sponsored doping program.

That sort of lofty achievement might earn today’s athlete a statue; it got Ford almost half a century of silence. “Never been celebrated,” Ford tells Nine’s A Current Affair this week. “I asked my father how he felt about me winning, and he turned around and said, ‘We didn’t know how to celebrate it’.”

Ford, who also brought home a bronze medal, was one of 121 Australian athletes who competed under a neutral flag and received similar hate mail and death threats, all because they defied government pressure to boycott the controversial Games in protest at the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

On Wednesday, after 45 years of being shunned and humiliated, Australia’s Moscow 1980 contingent have finally been welcomed home by prime minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Sussan Ley, who officially recognised their participation and subsequent treatment in a parliamentary address.

The Australian contingent who competed at the 1980 Moscow Olympics gather for a group photo in the Marble Foyer of Parliament House on Wednesday. Michelle Ford is front and centre.

“When you were chosen to wear the green and gold you should draw strength from knowing that the whole nation is with you,” Albanese said. “And on your return you should be welcomed home and celebrated for the inspiration you have brought to the next generation of Australian athletes.

“Yet 45 years ago, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan cast a dark shadow over what should have been your shining moment. As nations around the world grappled with the boycott, Australia’s athletes, some still only teenagers, were placed in an incredibly difficult position.

Michelle Ford on the podium in Moscow after winning gold.

“One hundred and twenty-one Australians chose to compete under the Olympic flag. Others chose to join the boycott. Some who had won selection never even had the chance to choose because their sport made the decision for them.”

The world was deep in the Cold War when the Soviet Union, due to host the Olympics in some seven months, invaded Afghanistan. US president Jimmy Carter announced America would boycott the Games, sending shockwaves around the world and prompting other nations to follow suit. In all, more than 45 countries withdrew in protest.

Then Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser called on the Australian Olympic Federation to join the boycott, despite continuing to trade with Soviet government. Although the AOF (now the Australian Olympic Committee) voted 6-5 to reject such a move, the Fraser government pressed on with a campaign that pressured athletes to make the decision themselves, offering individuals $6000 payments to stay home.

“How many lives is a medal worth?” Fraser asked at the time. “How many people have to be killed by Soviet armies before we will have total unity in this country on whether or not to compete in Moscow?”

Some did stay home, finding the pressure all too much, while the entire hockey and equestrian teams withdrew. The 121 athletes remaining from the original team of 273 were effectively smuggled out of the country. “We were like thieves trying to get away, not [even] allowed to tell our parents,” says Ford. “We became political pawns in this game, and I think that weighed heavily because we didn’t know what the game was.”

Ron McKeon, the swimmer and father of Australia’s most decorated Olympian Emma McKeon, was 19 and contesting his first Olympics. “A lot of us were kids, and trying to fathom and navigate our way through that was certainly difficult,” he recalls. “People started to take sides politically. There were protests … it was confusing. But I think back and it was like, well, it would be un-Australian not to fight to go.”

Michelle Ford (front, centre) with Peter Hadfield (on her left) and Max Metzker (in blue shirt, on her right) at Parliament House.

Emma says her dad’s Olympic experience was “extremely different” from her own, and that she and siblings David and Kaitlin never heard the in-depth story about what happened – a deliberate move by Ron to keep his children’s view of the Olympic movement positive.

“[I’m] very proud,” Emma said. “We’ve always been inspired by the fact that he went to the Olympics and we wanted to do the same thing. It’s something that’s so special.”

The Australians returned home from Moscow with nine medals and Max Metzker, the team’s flagbearer, likened the experience of being ostracised to that of returning Vietnam veterans.

Ford joined fellow athletes Metzker and Peter Hadfield in lobbying for Wednesday’s recognition in Canberra, which was attended by 50 Moscow Olympians, their families, team officials and coaches. For some, the past remained too painful even to go.

“The returning athletes were met at a nearby cold silence or cruel comments,” Albanese acknowledged. “Today we fix that. Today, on the 45th anniversary, we recognise all that you have achieved and acknowledge all that you have overcome.

“Take pride in both. You are Olympians. You are Australians and you have earned your place in the history of the game and our nation. Welcome to parliament and welcome home.”