I learned as a child that just because you can do something doesn't make it right. Evidently some Olympic athletes haven't learned that.
In the wake of the South Korean-Chinese-Indonesian cheating scandal in badminton we now have the antics of the British men's cycling team. After they won the gold one of the cyclists admitted that a team mate, Philip Hindes, deliberately crashed earlier in the competition so the qualifying round would be restarted.
Hindes, 19, suggested the crash was part of a deliberate ploy because the British team had made a poor start.
He said after winning gold: 'We were saying if we have a bad start, we need to crash to get a restart. I just crashed, I did it on purpose to get a restart, just to have the fastest ride. I did it. So it was all planned, really.'
The International Cycling Union confirmed that the incident had been reviewed at the time and the result was not in question - so all three British cyclists will keep their gold medals.
If that doesn't fall under the banner of poor sportsmanship I don't know what does. While the ICU feels it was within the rules that still doesn't make it right. Just as the badminton players cheated by not playing their best deliberately to affect who they would play next this action on the part of the Brits stinks. They should have been disqualified.
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I have to admit that I've often wondered if athletes do stuff like this. It's disheartening to have such dark thoughts confirmed. I always believed in "Play hard. Play fair. Nobody hurt."
ReplyDeleteI guess I put too much stock in the "pro" part of "professional athlete."
I am the same way. It always bothered me when people half-jokingly talked about a hockey team deliberately tanking so they got the 1st round draft pick. It could never be proven, and one would hope it was true.
ReplyDeleteIn this case you have the wanker actually come out and say it.