Ridiculousness at the Olympics

[Martin Aigner]

Happened yesterday at the 200m male backstroke event, final run.

Aaron Peirsol (USA) wins with a distance of 2.4 seconds the gold medal in front of Markus Rogan (AUT) and Razvan Florea (RUM). But for a long time there is no result to be seen on the screen in the stadium, which usually means that there might be a disqualification of one/more of the athleths. Finally the results shows: Gold: Markus Rogan, Silver: Razvan Florea, Bronze: James Goddard (GBR). Winner Aaron Peirsol is disqualified. Reason: He made some illegitimate moves at the turn.

Of course the US team protests, and after several minutes the protest succeeds. Reason: The judge, who said that Aaron Peirsol made the illegitimate move wrote his statement in french, and not in english, which is a formal faillure!!!

Now both, the austrian and english team objects. This objection is finally declined.

But that´s not the end of the story. The english team thinks about going to the international sports court and wants another verdict. (Who cares about winning a medal a couple of months after the end of the olympic games anyway???)

Now there is an interesting discussion in Austria, whether Rogan should be decleared winner or not. Peirsol most probably made illegal moves, but this, if at all, gave him an advantage of maybe some hundreths of seconds. But since he was ahead 2.4 seconds, it definetly was not a pivotal advantage. Others argue, that rules are rules, and it doesn´t matter how big the lead was.

IMHO, though the last argument has some merits, I still think that it would be wrong to disqualify Aaron Peirsol, since I´m sure he didn´t do it to gain an advantage or even did it on purpose.

What I really liked about the whole szenario: Markus Rogan, as soon as he saw that we was declared olympic champion, went to Aaron Peirsol and told him to object. In an interview he said that he´s just as happy with his silver medal, since he knows that he´s the second best backstroke swimmer in the world, but that Peirsol was simply better. Winning the gold medal wouldn´t be as important to him as the friendship with Peirsol is. I really liked that a lot.

What bothers me: Olympic games should be the main event in a 4 years period of swimming (and most of the other sports). How can it be that judges disqualify somebody and then write the report in a wrong language??? And furthermore: So what, I guess it wouldn´t be too tough to translate his statement.

Pretty ridiculous IMHO.

Your thoughts?

Martin Aigner