Quote:
Originally Posted by bean999
Brings to mind Churandy Martina, who used to compete for the Dutch Antilles but now competes for the Netherlands. Only in his case, after some political reorganisation, his country disappeared!
The IAAF no longer acknowledges the Netherlands Antilles as a country.
The only exception remains Aruba, but the athletes of all other Antilles Islands will have to compete for the Netherlands.
Martina has always freely chosen to compete for Curaçao (ie part of the NA) even though he could have run for The Netherlands.
"It has been for all of us a surprise..." |
This is all becoming a bit of a mess which needs rectified. Aruba are allowed to compete because they formed an Olympic Committee prior to a change in the Olympic Charter. Both Curaçao and St Maarten voted to become semi autonomous and cut some of the ties with the Netherlands. For that the IOC, forced their athletes to represent the Dutch anyway as Netherlands Antilles no longer existed and they would not allow the two islands to join the organisation. Seems a disgrace to me, as Hong Kong China was allowed to do so and it is not fully independent either. So athletes from these islands must now represent a country thousands of miles away and will only get chosen obviously if they are at least as good as their Dutch equivalents.
As for Anguilla and Turks and Caicos Islands, they are allowed to compete in IAAF events but not IOC which again is a total shambles. Allow them to compete in both. The IOC should be non political and allow all nations to be represented. What about those Anguillan, Turks & Caicos competitors who are not good enough to represent Britain, which would be the majority, they will never get the chance to taste Olympic participation.
Athletes from Kosovo are also in limbo even though 89 nations recognise the independence of the country. They are not allowed to compete in the Olympics but non independent nations such as Cayman Is, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Palestine and Hong Kong China are free to do so.
Politics in sport as usual.