Fresh off David Beckham being booted, more British athletes were dealing with the desperate disappointment of being left off the team for their home Olympics on Tuesday.
Some, like sprinter Richard Kilty, were furious.
Unlike the Los Angeles Galaxy superstar, the lesser-known track-and-field names will not have the chance to play another headline role at Britain’s biggest sporting party in over half a century, either.
Kilty tweeted: “ABSOLUTE DISGRACE” when he was overlooked for the men’s 200m, despite running inside the top Olympic qualifying time twice. He promised to appeal and said on Twitter that coaches and selectors had “a personal problem” with him, having only filled two of the three places in his event and still left him off the team.
Britain athletics head coach Charles Van Commenee was braced for a bunch of other appeals, having also controversially left out four leading women in the 800m in his team selection in favor of just one athlete — Lynsey Sharp from Scotland, who has not run the top Olympic time, but won the British trials and was second at last week’s European championships.
Marilyn Okoro threatened to quit after she was one of those dumped despite setting an Olympic “A” time this year. She was selected in the 1,600m relay, but that was no consolation.
“When I spoke to her [Okoro] on the phone, she indicated that she would quit,” Van Commenee said.
“I want to see how that goes in the next few days ... I don’t expect that athletes to receive that news well. They [the athletes he cut] made it difficult by not doing what they were supposed to do,” he added.
Also out of the 800m were former world bronze medalist and European indoor champion Jenny Meadows, Emma Jackson and Jemma Simpson. While Meadows struggled all season with injury and did not contest her non-selection, Okoro and Jackson have set Olympic times this season, but did not perform at the trials, won by the young Sharp.
Still, Simpson said the selectors’ choices had undermined Britain’s Olympic team and the entire Games effort.
“Taxpayers have spent a lot of money on the home Olympics. Don’t they deserve to see full representation of GB athletes!?” she tweeted.
On Monday, Beckham missed out on an emotional and ideal career swansong in his home city and at the Games he helped London win, when soccer boss Stuart Pearce decided the 37-year-old former England captain was not good enough for the 18-man soccer squad.
Van Commenee broke some more hearts on Tuesday.
For those unlucky athletes, they will likely be watching the July 27 opening ceremony on TV and not marching behind the host country’s flag. Lifelong dreams scratched out by a coach or official’s selection pen.
Just like British taekwondo star Aaron Cook, the European champion in the 80kg category. A 104th-ranked fighter was picked in his place.
Van Commenee did point out the athletics selectors agonized for two hours of their six-hour selection meeting over the women’s 800m athletes.
“Hearing the news that you are not part, that you can’t compete in your favorite event in the Olympics is not easy to digest and not easy to give that news,” Van Commenee said.
In all, Van Commenee did pick 71 athletes to go with the six marathon runners already selected. However, even though he included drug cheats Dwain Chambers and Carl Myerscough in the team, it was all about who was not going to get to compete.
Kilty, who also wrote of the struggles he faced to fund his Olympic training and the sacrifices he made, was adamant he had recovered from a virus he picked up during the trials and was injury-free just under a month ahead of the games.
“I am 100 percent fit, 2 “A” standards, 3 spots available & they say no & 5 slower athletes than me in the relay, they have a personal problem with me,” he said on Twitter.
Jackson summed it up best on realizing she was not going to get to run at her home Olympics, only the third-ever in Britain and first since 1948. She will never get another chance.
“Picking myself up and going up to training tonight is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but it will make me stronger,” she said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but