In your own language/ En tu idioma

Eduardo Del Buey
Foto: AP
La Jornada Maya

Martes 23 de agosto, 2016

Every organization should have a code of ethics and values that guides its development and directs its actions. To ignore this is to stray from one’s core.

In order to maintain its credibility, an organization must be seen to live up to that code in every case, and not just selectively. This respect for the code must be maintained despite whatever pressures may be brought to bear by outside forces. This is the only way to ensure that the organization is trusted by all. Organizations that don’t live up to this ideal are doomed to failure or ridicule.

This is the challenge facing the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

By permitting athletes with proven records of doping to compete in these Games, the IOC went against the Olympic Charter and its ideal of honesty in sports. Chinese and Russian athletes with a history of doping were allowed to participate and win medals. Their competitors who lived up to the ideals of the Olympic Charter were not rewarded for their honesty and integrity.

What did the IOC do?

Nothing.

By allowing tainted athletes to compete the IOC sent the message that it is all right to cheat if you don’t get caught. And if you do get caught, the IOC will bend to pressures to ensure that you can still compete.

On another front, Lebanese and Egyptian athletes demonstrated unsportsmanlike conduct towards members of the Israeli Olympic team.

The Egyptian Olympic Committee acted properly and rapidly to send home the athlete who refused to shake his Israeli opponent’s hand after his defeat. This sent a message to the Egyptian team they will not likely forget.

Saudi athletes refused to compete against Israeli counterparts, preferring to walk away from a competition rather than engage in true sporting fashion. This should be sanctioned by sending the entire team home. To date, the IOC has taken no action.

Lebanese athletes refused to board a bus with their Israeli counterparts and made an incident of it.

The IOC rightly criticized the Lebanese Olympic Committee for this episode. However, the only message that would have stuck for all athletes would have been to suspend all who took part in this episode from ever competing in any international sporting event again, and sending the team home immediately.

Dope and politics have no place in international sporting events, especially the Olympics that are supposed to be a model of human behavior.

To be fair to those athletes who follow the rules and values of the International Olympic movement, the IOC should immediately ban those athletes taking drugs or displaying unsportsmanlike conduct from all future Games. They should also expel from its IOC ranks any official who brings pressure to bear to turn a blind eye towards transgressions.

The IOC has a long history of questionable practices ([i]read The Lords of the Rings[/i] by Viv Simson and Andrew Jennings) and has yet rectify issues that have caused so much ill will towards the Organization in recent years.

It has a long history of submitting to political pressure.

Yet now, the athletes themselves are taking the IOC to task, speaking out against doping in the athletes’ ranks. Many of the swimmers have criticized the IOC openly for letting the Russian swimmer Yuliya Efimova (a proven doper) compete and take a silver medal. The audience joined the athletes in leveling criticism by booing Efimova and other Russian athletes known to have taken drugs.

If the IOC doesn’t take drastic steps to clean up its act, it will increasingly be the target of ridicule and contempt.

This is not what Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he established the international Olympic movement in the late nineteenth century, nor is it the ideal of athletes who sacrifice so much in the expectation of competing on a level playing field and in sporting spirit.

One would hope the IOC acts before its relevance is called into question by athletes and audiences everywhere. This has already begun, and the IOC should realize that serious sponsors are going to be increasingly reluctant to align themselves to a tarnished brand.

[b]Mérida, Yucatán[/b]
[b][email protected][/b]