farmdoc's blog post number 115

Last Friday the Games of the XXIXth Olympiad began in Beijing. The slogan of these Olympic Games is One World One Dream which, the official website says, ‘fully reflects the essence and the universal values of the Olympic spirit – Unity, Friendship, Progress, Harmony, Participation and Dream. It expresses the common wishes of people all over the world, inspired by the Olympic ideals, to strive for a bright future of Mankind’. Grand and inspirational words indeed; but maybe defiled last Saturday when an Iranian swimmer didn’t compete against an Israeli in a 100 metres breaststroke heat, alleging illness. I see that in the Olympic Charter, one of the ‘Fundamental Principles of Olympism’ is ‘Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement’. Therefore the International Olympic Committee must exhaustively investigate this matter. If it finds the alleged illness did not exist, then it must immediately expel the Iran National Olympic Committee from the Association of National Olympic Committees on the grounds that the swimmer’s withdrawal was due to ‘race, religion, politics’. If the IOC doesn’t act in this way, there’s no alternative but to conclude that the Olympic Movement is unfaithful to its principles and ideals, morally deficient, not credible, and doomed.