Beijing - In its bid to host the 2016 Olympics, Madrid
planned to present itself in Beijing as multicultural, open and
harmonious. That bid, however, has suffered a knock in the past few
days.
Doping and racism: these are what many outside Spain associate
with Spanish sport, which has become mired in controversy.
Maribel Moreno was the first athlete to test positive for doping
in Beijing 2008. She is Spanish. And, to make matters worse, her
team's best bet in women's cycling, a sport with a stigma of its own.
Spanish authorities are 'too lenient in their approach to doping,'
warned International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid.
The pledges of an anti-doping commitment made by Spanish sports
authorities were to no avail.
'I saw her at the Tour of Spain and asked myself, 'how can anyone
climb so fast?'' German cyclist Hanka Kupfernagel told a Cologne
daily about Moreno. 'That is not healthy, it is not normal, there has
to be something.'
The idea appears to have caught on outside Spain. Inside its own
borders, the current wave of triumphs - in football, tennis,
basketball, cycling - has prompted euphoria.
'We can hold our heads up high,' the Spanish secretary of state
for sports, Jaime Lissavetzky, said following the gold medal that
Samuel Sanchez obtained in the men's road race.
Lissavetzky did not imagine at the time that precisely the Spanish
sportsmen who have their heads up highest - the national basketball
squad - would be embroiled in controversy over a photograph.
Before travelling to Beijing, Pau Gasol and his teammates were
immortalized pulling the corners of their eyes with their fingers in
a bid to make them look Asia.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) described the image as
'clearly inappropriate'.
The Anglo Saxon media were a lot tougher in their analysis. The
British newspaper Daily Telegraph noted that Spain's 'poor reputation
for insensitivity toward racial issues has been further harmed.'
The British still remember last year's racist insults towards
Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona, or the way former Spain
football coach Luis Aragones spurred on Jose Antonio Reyes by
referring to his Arsenal teammate Thierry Henry as a 'negro de
mierda' - something like a 'dirty nigger.'
In China, the Spanish basketball team photo did not have too much
relevance. Beijing 2008 organizing committee official Wang Wei
admitted that he had not even seen the picture.
However, the media in Britain and the United States have given it
ample space, and its effect on Madrid's aspirations to host the
Olympics in 2016 and even later may yet prove to be overwhelming.
Beyond all the allegations of doping and racism, however, Spanish
athletes march on in Beijing. Among others, the basketball team has
secured a place in the quarterfinals, and Rafael Nadal - set to
become the number 1 in men's tennis on Monday - is in the semis.
USA
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