Greek Crowd A Disgrace!

mike65

Easily the worst moment of the games so far, as the mens 200 metre final was delayed for about 5 mins due to the Greeks booing the athletes as thier drug cheat star was'nt in the final.

Mike.

Amz

It was quite disappointing alright.
A black mark on their record at any rate.
It must certainly have contributed to the false start.

Flukey

Yes, it was a pity. It wasn't the American athletes fault that their man was not there!

Healio

I noticed this aswell when the greeks played the americans in the basketball, very bad reflection on the greeks.

dubhthach

Well the greeks are well know for their anti-americanism something which was made worse by the US led Nato bombings against the serbs in both Bosnia and Kosovo (and yugoslavia in general at the time), the main reason for been against it was the serbs are fellow eastern orthodox christians of all things :rolleyes:

Gordon

Indeed, it was partly due to dislike of the Americans and the Kenteris/Thanou dodge-ball scenario. Personally I'm disgusted by it, and the Greek friends I've spoken too about it have been very passionate against the show of immaturity.

Actually a mate of mine was there and apologised on behalf of the Greek people to an American athlete apparently (some hockey player).

When I saw it my mate and I came to the decision that if we were running the race we would try to get the other athletes together to boycott the race and do it somewhere with no crowd involved at a later date.

ecksor

I'd be very very surprised if any athlete on the start line would do that Gordon. I don't think there's any facility in the rules for the athletes to dictate that anyway.

Gordon

So hypothetically if all athletes said that they wouldn't run - would the race not take place or would the previous qualifiers run in their place?

gerire

if they are the finalists, they earned their place in it, and if they all wouldn't compete till there was no spectators the officials would have to respect the athletes id assume

ecksor

I don't know if that's provided for either, but I could never see all athletes refusing to run for no good reason. My guess would be that the race would not take place and nobody gets to be olympic champion.

Gordon

Which would defeat the purpose I suppose, if it is indeed what would happen.

hrmf, shame that.

Guy:Incognito

was they guy that was supposed to run for greece not the guy that had that dubious car crash before the games started? if so he took himself out of the games so what was the problem from the greek point of view?

Gordon

He was on a motorbike with the other best (200m?) runner from Greece, the day after they were both meant to be tested for doping. They couldn't be found that day and the next day they turned up after having a bike crash. Seeing footage of the motorbike there was very little damage to the bike indeed. It was extremely dodgy to say the least.

On the Greek side I think it is to do with the general concensus that doping is rife and "if everyone does it then it isn't cheating" or something like that. So they are miffed that their athletes were "picked on by the Olympic committee".

As for the anti American stuff, read up.

Basically, they were just being tossers.

Pherekydes

ecksor wrote:

I don't know if that's provided for either, but I could never see all athletes refusing to run for no good reason. My guess would be that the race would not take place and nobody gets to be olympic champion.

Or the reigning champion keeps his title by default. :mad:

josh40

Actually most Greeks were totally disgusted by the childish prank pulled by the two Greek "Stars". Nobody believes they had a motorbike accident, and most Greeks feel they got exactly what they deserved.

There is a great feeling here though that doping is seen as acceptable by many at the very top levels but the ordinary man on the street if pretty disgusted that the two top athletes have fallen from Grace .

The crowd on that particular night were way out of line but I went to the stadium a few nights and to be fair I have never seen a more supportive crowd, they cheered all athletes , including Americans.

Aren't Greeks Western Orthodox as opposed to Eastern?