Ioc Plans To Ground Eddie And His Ilk
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday May 28, 2003
Eddie the Eagle and Eric the Eel will no longer get a gong if the IOC has its way, writes Jacquelin Magnay.
No one can remember the victorious ski jumper from the 1988 Calgary Olympics, but everyone knows who came second last Eddie the Eagle.
But if the International Olympic Committee has its way, such glorious failures and other heroic losers, such as ``Eric the Eel" and the Jamaican bobsled team, will be things of the past.
The IOC plans to remove wildcard entrants from the Olympics, a move Eddie the Eagle, real name Eddie Edwards, says will lead to the Games' collapse.
If IOC president Jacques Rogge gets his way, we will no longer see the gallant efforts of no-hopers such as Eric ``the Eel" Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea, who nearly drowned as he flailed his arms for two laps of the Sydney Olympic pool.
Rogge has discounted the novelty of such performances and is planning to remove the ``wildcard" entries from developing nations.
``We want to avoid what happened in swimming in Sydney," Rogge told The Guardian. ``The public loved it, but I did not like it. The Olympic Games are a mixture of pure quality that is, the best athletes in the world and at the same time athletes of lesser quality who achieve universality.
``In the past, we made the error to select these athletes at the last moment. A country would say: `We have no qualified athletes, can we bring in a wildcard?' And these athletes were not good enough."
Rogge believes the public's acceptance of such competitors and their heroic shortcomings is not part of the Olympic ideal.
Australian IOC member Kevan Gosper said there had been a lot of debate about balancing the need for widespread participation of athletes and keeping competitiveness at an appropriately high level.
All developed nations have to satisfy tough selection criteria to compete at an Olympic Games. Australia has stringent selection policies for all members of its Olympic team.
But the mass popularity of the dud and the underdog, especially from poor and undeveloped nations, is unquestioned.
Eric the Eel's goggles sold after the Sydney Olympics for more than $2500. His website had more Olympic hits than that of the 400m champion Michael Johnson. He quickly attracted a swimming costume sponsor and the Spanish swimming authorities offered him a scholarship, an amazing development considering he had learned to swim only nine months earlier and was the slowest 100m freestyler in the history of the Games.
The Jamaican bobsled team had a movie made about it, among myriad endorsements, and there is even a cocktail named in its honour (15ml vodka and 15ml banana liquor.
Eddie Edwards's song Fly Eddie Fly made the top 50 in England and was No.2 in Finland. His book On the Piste is being made into a movie. Edwards, who finished second last in the ski jump at Calgary (the 57th competitor was disqualified) is still a popular speaker in Britain, opens shopping malls and does the odd ski jump promotion.
Edwards, 39, and now studying to be a legal eagle, told the Herald last night the Games were becoming ``a complete bore".
``This decision will lead to the collapse of the Olympic Games, it will be just another world championships," he said.
``The only thing that set the Olympics apart was the fact it had these ideals and that athletes from unusual countries could compete in unusual sports. Now all you will be left with is a bunch of ##2 million-a-year athletes competing against each other, which is very very boring. These [novice] athletes were more fun to watch."
Under IOC rules, countries that do not have athletes who meet Olympic qualifying standards are allowed six wildcard entries. They are then courted by sports such as track and field, swimming, wrestling, boxing and weightlifting, all keen to boost the number of nations competing in their sport.
There are also many competitors from sun-drenched countries attempting the Winter Olympics. Philip Boit, a Kenyan sub-28 minute 10,000m runner, switched to cross-country skiing in Finland and was last in the 10,000m cross-country at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. Fijian alpine skier Laurence Thoms went to the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002.
Rogge said the answer was for the IOC to provide technical help and finances for talented athletes in small, developing countries so their standards could be raised to sufficient levels to compete at the Olympics.
IOC director Gilbert Felli is negotiating with the Association of National Olympic Committees on how this can be achieved.
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald