If I am reading this right, Swiminfo.com is reporting that Craig Stevens is indeed going to back out of the 400 and leave it up to Australia Swimming to "pick another member of the Olympic Team" to swim that race in Athens. If I am ANY other country, swimmer, the 3rd place finisher at the Trials or an organization interested in ethics, then I am raising a stink on this one!!!! Thorpe DQ'd and the Aussies are going to skirt the rule and get him in anyway. They would be relegated to the status of Ben Johnson, Rosie Ruiz, and the 60+% of MLB who are on steriods! This is FREAKIN' UNBELIEVABLE. I have no respect for any of the aforementioned and if this happens, none for Ian Thorpe and the Australian swim federation (or whatever official name they hide behind) are in that seeming, stinking pile.
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Former Member
I'm coming to this discussion late, but count me with Aquageek also.
I think some people are missing some vital points in all this. First, the Olympics is supposed to be an opportunity for countries to pit their best athletes against each other. It's up to the individual countries to choose who they think are their best. That means that if the best in the US are professional athletes, they should be allowed to compete. That means that if Australia determines that someone who they consider their best didn't qualify in their regular selection process, they can choose that person anyway.
Why have a selection process in the first place? It's to choose the best athletes for the real competition down the line. That's its primary purpose, and if it fails in that mission, the country should be able to use an alternate process to choose their athlete. That may be difficult for overly-litigious Americans, who sue when their daughters don't make the cheerleading squad, to understand; but the FAIR and SPORTSMANLIKE thing in all this would be for the BEST to compete, through whatever selection process the country wants to use.
Furthermore, it would be UNFAIR to the other athletes competing in the Olympics to be robbed of the opportunity to compete against Thorpe. Suppose you won the gold medal in that event, but you didn't race against the guy who is considered the best in the world. Your gold medal, which is supposed to go to the best in the world, would always be tainted. You would always be left wondering whether you were really the best, or if Thorpe would have beaten you. It would always be "He won the gold... But only because Thorpe didn't compete that year." At that level, I would want to compete against the best, regardless of how his country chose him to compete.
People in this country are so caught up in legalities that they sometimes forget why things are done in the first place. The rules Australia put in place for their Olympic trials are meaningless if they don't serve the primary goal of those trials. Luckily, it looks like their own rules allow for what they're doing; and perhaps the Australians aren't as quick to run crying to a lawyer when things don't go their way, and the next place finisher will let the more fair decision stand without a lawsuit.
I'm coming to this discussion late, but count me with Aquageek also.
I think some people are missing some vital points in all this. First, the Olympics is supposed to be an opportunity for countries to pit their best athletes against each other. It's up to the individual countries to choose who they think are their best. That means that if the best in the US are professional athletes, they should be allowed to compete. That means that if Australia determines that someone who they consider their best didn't qualify in their regular selection process, they can choose that person anyway.
Why have a selection process in the first place? It's to choose the best athletes for the real competition down the line. That's its primary purpose, and if it fails in that mission, the country should be able to use an alternate process to choose their athlete. That may be difficult for overly-litigious Americans, who sue when their daughters don't make the cheerleading squad, to understand; but the FAIR and SPORTSMANLIKE thing in all this would be for the BEST to compete, through whatever selection process the country wants to use.
Furthermore, it would be UNFAIR to the other athletes competing in the Olympics to be robbed of the opportunity to compete against Thorpe. Suppose you won the gold medal in that event, but you didn't race against the guy who is considered the best in the world. Your gold medal, which is supposed to go to the best in the world, would always be tainted. You would always be left wondering whether you were really the best, or if Thorpe would have beaten you. It would always be "He won the gold... But only because Thorpe didn't compete that year." At that level, I would want to compete against the best, regardless of how his country chose him to compete.
People in this country are so caught up in legalities that they sometimes forget why things are done in the first place. The rules Australia put in place for their Olympic trials are meaningless if they don't serve the primary goal of those trials. Luckily, it looks like their own rules allow for what they're doing; and perhaps the Australians aren't as quick to run crying to a lawyer when things don't go their way, and the next place finisher will let the more fair decision stand without a lawsuit.
