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.
Former Member
Originally posted by Shaky
... 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.
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To send Thorpe, you are making the assumption that he is the BEST. I acknowledge that this would be a fair assumption. But it is possible that he would have been beat that day.
I wonder if Thorpe had not been DQ'ed, and for some reason turned in a bad time. Would the same debate still be happening? Let's say he had a bad swim, but we all know that he is still more capable of winning the gold than the other Aussies, should he be sent to Athens then?
Originally posted by aquageek
A couple of things:
1. In the abscence of a quotable rule that is being violated, your argument is much less potent. Taking the moral high ground is admirable. But, your morals aren't necessarily those of others. Nor have you proven the Australians are doing anything other than follow their own rules, which, they are allowed to do.
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Dang it. You want us to prove what we are saying. That's not fair.;)
Seriously, you are right in this regard. Those of us who are on the side of Thorpe not swimming are assuming that there is a rule broken. I don't know if a rule is being broken for sure. Does anyone know what the Aussie rule says?
Actually, Australia does have a rule -- if a swimmer drops out his place goes to the next place swimmer. They've just convenently come up with an interpretation, after the fact, that the rule doesn't mean what it says. I suppose that since it's their rule they can apply it however they want -- at least, no one can stop them.
Of course, there's no IOC rule that they have to use a trials meet to select the team or that they have to abide by the results, if they do. They could have reserved the right to change the line up of swimmers if the result of the trials were not to their liking or they could have selected a team by committee or any other method. But they didn't -- they chose to use a trials meet and now they're changing the rules becuase they don't like the results.
This isn't just a matter of legalities -- it's an issue of fairness to their own athletes. They made a promise to their athletes about how the team would be selected and now they're breaking that promise. (By the way, I don't believe that Stevens is dropping out "voluntarily" -- he's obviously under tremendous pressure.) They can do it, because no one (outside of Australia) can stop them, but we don't have to ignore the hypocrisy of it.
By the way, Benjamin Cardozo (I believe), when he sat on New York Court of Appeals, once used "changing the rules after the scores are posted" as a metaphor for a particularly odious type of goverment misconduct -- because, he thought, it would be unthinkable in a sporting context. I guess he was wrong.
Originally posted by Gareth Eckley
What are the US swimmers doing after their events ?
Hopefully going out and drinking lots of Ouzo!:D
Seriously, Sweetenham sounds a little too dictatorial. I think he missed his true calling as a gymnastics coach.
More on Foster and Bill Sweetenham.
Foster of course should swim, we are not sending anyone in the 50m free, even though he could place in the top 3 on a good day !
Bill has decided that the swimmers are not allowed to go to the opening ceremony. They will be flown in from Cyprus just for the swim events. Then after the Olympic swim events are over they HAVE to return to the UK. They are not allowed to be at the closing ceremonies.
He wants then home training their 60K a week for the UK short course championship !
Being at the Olympics is an amazing experience and after they have swum they should be able to enjoy the experience of being at Athens.
What are the US swimmers doing after their events ?
Originally posted by Shaky
fairness to this one guy who shouldn't have been there in the first place. The sportsmanlike thing here is for Stevens to realize his place and step down.
Obviously your view of what's fair is at odds with some of us. I believe it's fair to EVERYONE that Stevens has the spot because he was second at Australian Olympic Trials. End of discussion. A DQ is not a "technicality" in my book.
Originally posted by Scansy
Unfortunately, you are correct. There is so much money involved in sports for the atheletes, owners, agents, TV, etc., etc., etc. that it rules sports. Those of us who are big sports fans feel like the pure sport of it is lost. At least that is how I feel.
Pure sports have never existed. Someone has always been looking for the edge. There is no era of pure sports, just bygone eras that seem pure compared to today's standards. Back in the era we all think of as pure, they were moaning and groaning themselves about the loss of purity.
Originally posted by aquageek
I have yet to understand why there is such resistance.
It is because, in the US, we are overly legalistic and bound to rules. We care less about whether something is fair than whether a rule was broken. Someone makes an error in his taxes and loses his home to a technicality? Too bad, he should have followed the rules. A law is causing people to lose their jobs? Oh well, we can't help the loss of their jobs until we change the rule.
I once read an essay about this subject that compared Britain's legal system and that of the US. The author argued that the British put more emphasis on what was right and fair than on whether the rules were followed to the letter. He claimed that British judges had more leeway (and propensity) to rule based upon the spirit of the law, whereas American judges had to rule based upon the letter of the law. The author pointed to our written Constitution as a source of our love for written legalities.
Personally, I think it comes down to responsibility. When you have rules you can hide behind, you don't have to take responsibility for tough choices. "Sure, it's sad, but there's nothing I can do! I'm bound by the law!" I frequently encounter this attitude here in Washington, where government workers seem to thrive on creating "policy" and hiding behind it.
It doesn't surprise me that we would have people wanting to make the Olympics more about rules than the spirit of the thing.
Originally posted by kaelonj
No law / rule has been broken by the Aussie swim federation in choosing Thorpe, they are free to choose whoever they want to swim. But this choice would discredit the whole idea of having a qualifying /trials meet.
If the purpose of the trials is to select the best athletes, then having the best athlete barred from his best event over a technicality would discredit the trials even more. If the trials aren't going to result in the best athletes attending, then they fail their purpose.
The choice of which you speak doesn't discredit the trials, but the disqualification rule that caused this problem in the first place. In most instances the trials work fine and serve their purpose. In the case where they didn't, luckily the Aussies have enough common sense to fix the problem.
On the question "swimmer" had about why they sought a legal opinion on their rules, it's precisely to head off a legal challenge against choosing Thorpe. They knew what they needed to do; they just had to find the legal language to explain the action, so that if some other swimmer tries to sue for a spot on the team, they can defend that suit.
