Concerns over security, "chauvinistic sentiments" and "an anti-Soviet hysteria" in the USA
The USA had indeed led a boycott of the 1980 Games, Reagan had denounced the USSR in 1983 as an "evil empire", "the focus of evil in the modern world", and, from papers uncovered in 2016, the USSR had a well-established statewide doping system in track and field particularly boosted for the 1984 Olympics, which increased doping controls for the Games might have frustrated, but officially the USSR cited security and attitude.