Category — Controversies

Here’s a pretty strong — but we must say not unfounded — statement by British athlete Jason Gardener on the drug scandals that has engulfed athletics in recent years.

“If Maurice Greene is proved to be a cheat then, apart from Kim Collins, every winner of the world and Olympic titles I tried to win from 1999 to 2005 will have been shown to be frauds.

It’s so disappointing. You can’t help thinking what might have been. My childhood dreams have been destroyed by cheats time after time.

As a teenager, I remember the build-up to the 1988 Olympic final between Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis in Seoul and Johnson just blew the field away. It was amazing and an inspiration to me.

Then it came out that he had failed a dope test. I can remember him saying that everyone was on drugs and the outcry in the sport. Now when I look back at that 100m final, with all the people with a question-mark beside their names, he was right, wasn’t he?

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Let’s include Malaysian Kevin Lim among the list of athletes who have some issues (okay, gripes) against their country’s sports officials. His unsure road to Beijing looks like this:

1. The Malaysian Yatching Association did not register anyone for the last yatching Olympic qualifying event held in Australia

2. Kevin, acting on his own, pleads with the organizers to accept his registration

3. He earns an Olympic slot when he placed 15th overall. In effect, Malaysia also earns a slot to the Olympics

4. He has been training for the Beijing Olympics ever since he qualified

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Let’s include my favorite Anglican Archbishop, South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu in our list of party poopers.

From Reuters: Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged world leaders on Sunday to stay away from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August.

“The leaders of the free world, for goodness sake, don’t attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games until it is quite clear that they (the Chinese) mean business and that they will stop the violence against the Tibetans,” Tutu said at a Cape Town ceremony for an alternative “Tibetan” Olympic torch.

South Africa’s Nobel Peace laureate lit a “Tibetan” Olympic torch, which was kindled in Delhi on January 30 and will travel to cities on five continents before arriving in May back in Dharamsala, India, where Tibet’s parliament-in-exile is based.

Protesters have followed the official Olympic flame as it travelled around the world and highlighted China’s human rights record in Tibet ahead of the Games starting on Aug. 8.

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This is interesting. Some countries are finding it hard to find someone to represent them in the Olympics but New Zealand must have an abundance of talents as it has rejected two marathoners despite these two clocking “A-standard times”.

But what exactly is “A-standard time”? Well, we don’t know but we might do a future post on it if we find out what it means. Hehe.

Anyways, the Sunday Star Times reports that one of those rejected by Athletics NZ, Liza Hunter-Galvan, has “engaged an American lawyer to fight her case to be in the New Zealand team for Beijing”.

Is this the first time, someone had to file a case to be included in an Olympic team?

Hunter-Galvan isn’t the only one frustrated with Athletics NZ. According to the Star-Times, marathoner Michael Aish, who’s also not picked has “had enough after a decade of frustration with Athletics NZ”.

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Don’t look now but there’s a mini-controversy going on after the Olympic torch made its run in Malaysia.

No it isn’t about pro-Tibet activists protesting against China although there was some of that. It’s about how former Olympians were ignored by the torch relay organizers.

Isthiaq Mubarak, who represented Malaysia in Mexico, Munich, and Montreal shares his feeling about the matter:

“There were so many torch bearers who were not even part of the Olympics but were included while people like me who has been inducted into the Hall of Fame was not even considered. Where is the Olympism?”

Ahh, we gotta feel for Isthiaq. And he is not alone. Here’s Asian Games bronze medalist Rajemah Sheikh Ahmad and the wife of former Olympian Kamaruddin Maidin:
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