The “ruling” is in, Pippa Savage won’t compete at the London Olympics. A couple of weeks ago, Emma Snowsill also lost her “appeal”.
Olympic selection is no longer a sacred unassailable privilege. It’s a discriminatory process – potentially costing athlete’s opportunities, which is right for legal challenge.
Perhaps the athletes’ intentions are to make sure the selection criteria were followed in the interests of fairness. Perhaps their complaints are based on honorable ideals for a Nation to be represented by its best competitors.
I think such cases clearly demonstrate though, the event is obviously no longer a competition of amateurs. Commercially, it makes sense for the unselected to gamble the expense of legal teams, rather than miss the windfall of competing.
I think this trend is sad. Will people look back on our results and always wonder about selection choices and “what if..?”. Hopefully I won’t.
And hopefully the chosen athletes in the throws of training and competition are unburdened by their own concerns whether they are the right people to represent their country.
They’ve proven through healthy (often fierce) qualification events they were our country’s best.
This used to be more than enough.
One’s missed opportunity is an opportunity for another. From a perspective, Olympics are exhibitions of excellence, and I so look forward to seeing them.