Downside of the Olympics

LONDON – While there were many ups to celebrate at the recently-concluded 30th Olympics here, there were also downs that clouded the spirit of Olympism espoused by the International Olympic Committee through the 204 member nations that were represented by 10,490 athletes in 302 medal events.

Here were some of the forgettable moments during the Summer Games:

Missing in action. As of last count, 15 Olympians disappeared from the Athletes Village or sought political asylum to remain in England. According to The Daily Mail, immigration authorities anticipate the number to swell when the special UK visas issued to athletes and delegates expire in November. Congo judoka Cedric Mandembo, who lost his first and only Olympic match in 49 seconds, can’t be found. His coach Ibula Masengo is also gone missing. Congo boxing coach Blaise Bekwa and national technical director of athletics Guy Nkita are unaccounted for, too. Add to the list a Cameroon swimmer, a Cameroon female football player and a Sudan athlete. 

Cameroon boxer Thomas Essomba said he is deserting because there is no future for professional athletes in his country. “We want to practice the sport we love,” he said. “We want to become professional. We cannot return to Cameroon. If we return, we will not practice anymore.” Essomba is one of five Cameroon fighters seeking asylum.

At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, four Filipino cyclists vanished into thin air after performing miserably in their events. Rodolfo Guaves, Diomedes Panton, Deogracias Asuncion and Edgardo Pagarigan didn’t show for the return flight home. Panton and Pagarigan reportedly did not even bother to retrieve their Philippine passports from the delegation official who held the travel documents for sake-keeping. Asuncion and Guaves checked in their bikes at the terminal counter then took off. 

Positive for doping. London’s anti-doping program was the most extensive in Olympic history with 5,000 samples taken during the Games. Every competitor who won a medal was tested. Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus was stripped of her gold medal in women’s shot-put after testing positive for steroids. The Independent reported that 13 “souped-up” athletes were uncovered compared to 18 in Beijing. Two Moroccan runners, Amine Laalou and Mariem Alaoui, were banned for testing positive the day before the Games began. Others who tested positive were Russian track cyclist Victoria Baranova, Albanian weightlifter Hysen Pulaku, Saint Kitts and Nevis sprinter Tameka Williams, Uzbek gymnast Luiza Galiulina, Syrian 400-meter hurdler Ghfran Almouhamad, French distance runner Hassan Hirt and US judoka icholas Delpopolo. The first Olympian to test positive for a performance-enhancing drug was Swedish pentathlete Hans Gunnar Liljenwall at the 1968 Olympics.

Surprisingly, Victor Conte was in London during the Games. He was convicted of peddling boutique-type drugs to athletes and became a state witness. Today, Conte is at the forefront of an anti-drug campaign with Filipino world boxing champion Nonito Donaire, Jr. one of his spokesmen. Conte said 60 percent of athletes in London were on drugs but had no proof to back up his claim.

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Tickets on the black market. The hottest-selling tickets were for the opening and closing ceremonies, the basketball finals and the athletics finals, particularly where Usian Bolt was involved. Police officers from Operation Podium arrested eight unlicensed ticket sellers peddling in the streets on the first day of the Olympics. One of them Josef Aguirre, 29, was later sentenced to serve 28 days in jail after trying to tout 56 tickets.

Corporate sponsors were allocated tickets for various events but in the preliminaries, they hardly showed up, leaving big gaps in the stands. Soldiers in brown camouflage uniforms wound up filling the empty seats. Organizers later arranged for more tickets to be sold on the day of a particular event so as not to disenfranchise anyone. A total of 11 million tickets were out in the market, with 75 percent going to Britons. In Beijing, it was estimated that 50 percent of just over seven million tickets were available to the public.

Unsportsmanlike behavior. South Korean fencer Shin A Lam staged a sit-in for an hour to protest her loss, claiming faulty equipment gave her opponent too much time to strike. She was eventually escorted out of the stadium. The Spanish water polo team did something similar. A last-minute winning goal was disallowed and Spain wound up losing to Croatia. A “swim-in” was held in protest. Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou was sent off the Athletes Village for mocking African immigrants and expressing support for a far-right policy. Swiss football player Michel Morganella called South Koreans “mongoloids” and told them to “go burn” in a tweet in garbled French after a 2-1 loss on the pitch. Morganella was ordered home for his tweets. Russian journalist Andrei Mitkov, 35, was stripped of his media accreditation and ejected from the UK after assaulting a pregnant Olympic volunteer for denying his entry in a weightlifting event. Mitkov was detained by police overnight before the exile. In the basketball quarterfinals, Spain beat France, 66-59, as tempers flared because of the physical play, prompting TV commentator and former NBA center John Amaechi to describe the game as a “disgrace” to the sport.

Awful displays. Germany’s 22-year-old Stephan Feck landed on the middle of his back in a loud splash after attempting a difficult 3 1/2 somersault pike on the three-meter springboard in his second attempt of the diving event. The crowd groaned and the judges mercilessly gave him a zero for the effort. While Feck failed inadvertently, badminton players deliberately lost matches in the eliminations to position themselves for light opponents in the knockout round. Doubles teams, already assured of advancement, were accused of attempting to manipulate group placings to avoid facing countrymen or stronger teams. Four pairs of players were found guilty of fixing and disqualified for “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport.” One of the expelled players Yu Yang of China announced her retirement from the sport after the shameful exit. Korean and Indonesian players were also sanctioned.

In weightlifting, disaster struck at least four competitors, including Filipina Hidilyn Diaz who failed in three attempts to lift 118 kilograms, once landing on her back under the weight of a barbell. German superheavyweight Matthias Steiner’s knees buckled under the load of a 196 kilogram barbell that pushed his neck down. South Korea’s Jae Hyouk Sa cracked his elbow trying to lift 162 kilograms and Egypt’s Khalil Mahmoud Abir Abdelrachman was pinned to the ground by a 151 kilogram barbell. Jae was taken to a hospital with his elbow bent backwards. He had fallen to the floor screaming.

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Boxing injustice. Filipino lightflyweight Mark Anthony Barriga was robbed of a win in the round-of-16 after Canadian referee Roland Labbe slapped a penalty for head-butting to award two points to Kazakhstan’s Birzhan Zhakypov. Without the penalty, Barriga would’ve won, 16-15. But with the penalthy,Zhakypov prevailed, 17-16. Several protests were filed as cries of injustice reverberated in the ExCel Arena. Barriga’s camp protested the loss, paying the $500 filing fee, but the complaint was rejected for lack of merit and the AIBA jury gave back $400. Some appeals were upheld, one involving a Japanese bantamweight and another an American welterweight. 

AIBA president Dr. Wu Ching Kuo has vowed transparency and fairness in scoring Olympic bouts but continued to receive flak for the incompetence of certain referees and judges. Instead of trying to restrain amateur boxers from joining the ranks of the WBC, WBA, WBO or IBF, Dr. Wu should prioritize the raising of the level of competence of AIBA’s ring officials. Dr. Wu is determined to battle the pro governing bodies by supporting two pro leagues supervised by AIBA.

Singer exploits London. Former Wham frontman George Michael performed two songs at the Olympic closing ceremony and was chastised for taking advantage of a global audience to promote his new single “White Light” which is about his near-death experience with pneumonia last year. British musicians tapped for the ceremony at the equivalent of P65 apiece sang familiar tunes considered rock anthems in the UK like “Waterloo Sunset” by the Kinks’ Ray Davies and “Wonderwall” by Liam Gallagher, formerly of Oasis and now with Beady Eye. But Michael went against the trend and did something new, clearly to promote his new single – which was contrary to the show’s concept of presenting classic British music. Michael justified the selection of the song by saying he meant to inspire Olympic athletes to work hard in overcoming the stiffest obstacles.

Despite the low moments, the Olympics were a wonderful experience for athletes and spectators alike.