Main characters of the 2024 Olympics (Images: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)

SportsAugust 7, 2024

The biggest scandals of the 2024 Paris Olympics so far

Contributing writer

Main characters of the 2024 Olympics (Images: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)

Drones, doping allegations, dirty water and much, much more.

At its heart, the Olympics is about celebrating international sporting excellence, in the spirit of friendship, solidarity and unity. It’s about building a more peaceful and connected world through organised sports! But it’s also about scandals, brazen acts of cheating, and a lot of very geopolitically tense athletic showdowns. We’re into the second week of the 2024 Olympics, and already the sparks are flying. Here are some of the biggest scandals rocking the Olympics this year.

There’s something in the water

Swimming got off to a turbulent start at the Olympics. First, there were complaints about the pool being too shallow, allegedly slowing swimmers down. Then there were concerns about the water quality of the Seine and the quantity of faecal matter contained therein, with several triathletes (including NZ silver medalist Hayden Wilde) subsequently falling ill.

But no Olympics is complete without a good doping controversy, particularly in the athletics and swimming departments, where the margins separating athletes are impossibly slim. When Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle won the 100m freestyle gold, breaking his own record by half a second, it raised the eyebrows of former Olympian and current Australian Brett Hawke, who expressed scepticism about the legitimacy of Zhanle’s win, claiming it “wasn’t humanly possible”.

The controversy followed an incident earlier in the year when it was revealed that a group of Chinese swimmers had tested positive for TMZ, a banned heart medication with performance-enhancing effects. The athletes were acquitted by Chinese anti-doping investigators who claimed the results were an aberration, blaming contaminated Australian hamburgers, which is funny. Some of the swimmers implicated in the scandal are competing in this year’s Olympic games.

Pan Zhanle on his way to a gold medal (Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images)

While I wouldn’t put it past any national sporting body to pharmaceutically bend the rules if they thought they could get away with it, there’s an element of xenophobia and hypocrisy here, with swimming prodigies like Katie Ledecky being lauded for her ability to effortlessly dominate the competition, while Zhanle, also an extraordinary athlete, has been treated with suspicion and disdain, despite having been subjected to extensive drug testing prior to competition. Zhanle has complained about his treatment, accusing rivals of “looking down” on him and even deliberately splashing his coach.

Doping is a complicated subject, and I won’t pretend to understand the medical complexities. Maybe nobody is doping. Maybe everyone is doping. Maybe “doping” is an arbitrary and medically nebulous concept which becomes harder and harder to police as our collective pharmaceutical prowess grows ever more sophisticated. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply hold two Olympic games. A normal one, in which everyone follows the rules. And the Party Olympics, where anyone can take as many performance-enhancing drugs as they like without giving themselves heart failure. I know which one I’d tune in for.

Fencing fixing fallout

It’s difficult to enjoy fencing as an amateur spectator because the athletes are too damn fast. It’s like watching someone threading a needle on a galloping horse at midnight. Unfortunately, it’s not just confusing for the spectator. It’s such a fast-paced sport that even the most eagle-eyed referees make mistakes, and when it comes to scoring, some human error is inevitable. While there is VAR, athletes only have a limited number of opportunities per match to appeal decisions.

The world of fencing was rocked by scandal earlier this year, after an anonymous YouTuber purporting to be a former Olympic sabre competitor came forward with allegations of match-fixing, accusing a number of referees of deliberately conspiring to manipulate the results of fencing tournaments in order to benefit their favourites. While these allegations are hardly new, they caused a massive upset within the fencing community, with several top fencers retiring from the sport in protest.

While this isn’t exactly an Olympic scandal, as it technically didn’t happen at the Olympics, the allegations have left the sport under a black cloud.

The men’s fencing foil team gold medal match (which was probably not fixed) (Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Grudge matches on the ‘gram

After the US gymnastics squad won the gold medal for the women’s all-around team competition, Simone Biles posted a triumphant photo on Instagram of the winning squad, with the now famous caption: “lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions.”

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A post shared by Simone Biles (@simonebiles)

The comment was a clear reference to comments made by former US Olympic gymnast MyKayla Skinner, who had previously criticised the US gymnastics team in a now-deleted video, saying, among other things, “I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be.” This isn’t the first time Skinner’s petulant social media posts have landed her in trouble, and although Skinner has since apologised for her comments, Biles’s iconic Instagram caption is proof she hasn’t been forgiven.

Skinner didn’t acknowledge Biles’s post but has since blocked Biles on social media. Biles posted a tweet saying “oops I’ve been blocked”. Eyes emoji. Hand over mouth emoji. Crying laughing emoji.

Judo meltdown

OK so I don’t know much about judo. But my shallow, one-week acquaintance with the sport has taught me that these athletes care a LOT about etiquette and respect, both for their opponent and for the noble art of judo. Which makes any display of temper and bad sportsmanship much more shocking than, say, someone flinging their racquet after a frustrating game of tennis.

Guram Tushishvili of Georgia was disqualified from the 2024 Olympics and bronze medal contention after his behaviour in the men’s +100kg judo quarter-final. Tushishvili appears to have lost his temper with his opponent, French athlete and judo legend Teddy Riner, after Riner claimed a victory. Tushishvili first kicked him in the crotch and then pushed Riner’s head into the ground, before finally receiving a red card and disqualification. Maybe there should be an Olympic version of the Razzies for sore losers?

And the gold medal for sorest loser goes to… (Photo: Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

Soccer snooping

For years Canada has been fraudulently coasting by on their international “nice guy” reputation. But after their shocking behaviour at the 2024 Olympics, the friendship between New Zealand and its commonwealth sister may never be the same again. The Canadian football team was deducted six points, fined $313,000 and three of its head coaches were sent home in disgrace after spying on the NZ Football Ferns’s tactics, by flying a drone over their Olympic training sessions. The situation is further complicated by the fact that one of the coaches sent home, Bev Priestman, is married to former Football Fern Emma Humphries. Sadly the New Zealand team didn’t win a medal, but the good news is, those no-good, lousy, scheming, cheating Canadians didn’t either. If anyone needs me, I’ll be busy throwing out all my maple syrup and burning my Justin Bieber posters.

Horrid horse people

Olympic dressage has once again failed to beat “being mean to horses” allegations following top British athlete and three-time gold-medal winner Charlotte Dujardin pulling out of the Olympics after video surfaced of her whipping a horse over 20 times. Dujardin has since apologised for her behaviour, but the whole incident is yet another nail in the coffin for those who believe that equestrian sports are just a prestigious form of animal cruelty and that horses should be cut from the Olympic programme altogether.

Hateful losers on the internet

Possibly the biggest scandal at the Olympics has been the shameful treatment of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who had her Olympic career unexpectedly derailed by some of the world’s biggest haters and losers.

Imane Khelif, a cisgender woman from Algeria, a country in which it’s illegal to transition, has become a scapegoat for transphobic activists after there were unconfirmed allegations that the fighter had higher than usual levels of testosterone. I won’t go into the medical particulars, which have been covered extensively elsewhere. But the TDLR is, despite complying with international sporting regulations, Khelif has spent her short Olympic career having to defend herself against irate transvestigators, such as JK Rowling, Donald Trump and… Winston Peters.

Imane Khelif is declared the winner of her fight with Angela Carini (Photo: Fabio Bozzani/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The biggest scandal here is the shameless behaviour of Khelif’s competitors, particularly Italian boxer Angela Carini, who dropped out of her match with Khelif after 46 seconds, tearfully claiming she had “never been hit so hard”, a claim which is hard to sympathise with, considering she was at the Olympics for boxing. Another boxing competitor, Hungarian Luca Anna Hamori, added fuel to the trash fire, posting an inflammatory picture of a dainty woman in a boxing ring facing what appeared to be a minotaur ahead of her fight with Khelif. Khelif beat Hamori by unaaaaaaaanimous decision and has earned herself, at minimum, a bronze medal.

Carini has since apologised for her comments and for not shaking Khelif’s hand after their match, but it’s too little too late for the Algerian fighter, who has inadvertently become the target of some of the most stupid and hateful people on the internet. The good grace and sportsmanship that Kheilf has shown has won her a new generation of fans, who will be tuning in on Wednesday morning to see Khelif compete for the gold medal.

And a convicted sex offender

You’d think that every media organisation in the world simultaneously printing your photo with the caption “child rapist” would be enough to dissuade anyone from competing at the world’s most prestigious sporting event. But not so for Dutch athlete Steven van de Velde.

Van de Velde has just left the Olympics, after the Dutch beach volleyball team lost to Brazil, and good riddance. Van de Velde was convicted of raping a 12-year-old British girl in 2016. He was booed loudly by crowds every time he touched the ball, and has since left the Olympics with no medals.

That’s about it for the Olympic scandals of 2024. At least, the ones that I’ve heard of. But with another five days left to go, there’s still time to squeeze a little more drama from the programme.

Keep going!

God defend our teary land

SportsAugust 6, 2024

Nothing beats an old-fashioned Olympics cry

Alex Casey

Senior writer

God defend our teary land

Here’s something we can all win gold in: crying at the television.

As this here website has already well-established, you probably don’t have what it takes to ever be an Olympian. I once threw a shot put at a local athletics park, and it landed approximately 20cm away and I thought I had broken my neck, my back, and you know the rest. I tried to form a doubles crew with my partner in a kayak once and he immediately started throwing up due to motion sickness. I can’t even pull off a Jojo Siwa bow like Melissa Jefferson.

But there’s one sport I believe many of us could confidently execute at an Olympic level: crying while watching the Olympics. Every single time I have tuned in, I have found myself turning on waterworks so powerful that they could dilute the stinky old Seine in an instant. The steady flow began during the opening ceremony, where many countries I’d never heard of sailed down the Seine, boogying it up like they were on a booze cruise. Everyone was just so, so happy :’)

Then there was damn Celine Dion singing for the first damn time in four damn years from the damn Eiffel Tower. I had no idea what she was going on about, despite taking French for three years at high school (and just last year expertly asking a guide in that very same spot “excusez moi, quelle heure… do le lights come on?”). But it didn’t matter what she was saying – she was so triumphant that the tears gushed forth like the icy cold waters into the Titanic.

This was already a lot of emotion to process for someone who has cried at a photo of a volcano smiling, a video of an injured bird wearing paper “boots”, and the mere thought of that old man who grows really big vegetables. Luckily, crying can have a raft of positives. A 2014 study found that a good cry can have a self-soothing effect and actually help you to relax. The study also found that crying releases endorphins, which can “ease both physical and emotional pain”.

There are also benefits to seeing other people crying. “I think one of the important evolutionary functions of crying is that if we see someone cry we feel more empathy for them,” Professor Jennie Hudson, the director of the Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University, told RNZ during the pandemic. “We reach out and we want to help them.” That explains why I had to delete Instagram to stop myself sending a gushing DM to every athlete who had a bad run.

Because as we got stuck into the actual sports, emotions got even more raw. After Erika Fairweather missed out on a medal by just a quarter of a second, her heartbreaking post-swim interview brought on a Dawson-level scrunch couch-side here in NZ. The interviewer was halfway through her question when Fairweather put her hand over her mouth because her lip had started to wobble. “Is it just hitting you?” the interviewer asked gently. “Yep,” said Fairweather, dabbing at her eyes.

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“I mean you can be gutted, but I am so thankful for the support I’ve received. I just wish it was more today, but it’s OK.” Asked to give a message to young girls out there (like me, 12 years her senior, weeping), she said this: “I might be crying right now, but that does not mean I’m not proud of myself, getting to the Olympics is a massive achievement in itself and, to be fourth in the world, I shouldn’t really be complaining.” Oh captain, my captain.

There’s also been heart-wrenching moments like Zoe Hobbs missing out on the big race during the 100m sprint semi-finals. “I feel like I let myself down today,” she said, voice quivering and tears threatening to burst the dam (mine had already runneth over). “But I’m just proud to be here.” To make a moment of heartbreak ten thousand times worse, German competitor Gina Lückenkemper made an atrocious “photobomben” attempt that turned my cries to screams.

Make no mistake: the lads have cried too. When Tom Walsh suffered an injury during the shot put semi-finals, he welled up describing the moment he tore his groin apart, summing up the excruciating body horror as “that’s life”. “I wanted to go out there and give a good go and that’s what I did,” he said, eyes swimming. “It’s always pretty special to wear the black singlet.” Back home, I had to delete Instagram to stop DMing him a message of support through sobs.

There was also Dylan Schmidt, who, despite missing out on the podium for trampolining after a wonky landing, nary shed a tear. The same could not be said for me, who was already three tissue sheets to the wind ever since the commentator had casually pointed out Schmidt was looking kind of lonely sitting on the bench by himself. “Cuts a lonely figure out there, perhaps the coach is going to get him a sandwich.” Men eating lunch alone = my cry kryptonite.

Thankfully, the tears haven’t all been tears of sorrow. There’s been the Kiwi mucking in teamwork that led to Hayden Wilde’s beautiful silver triathlon win, which lead to a photograph even more moving than the one of a squirrel sniffing a dandelion (content warning: emotional). He also thanked his partner Hana for putting up with him being a “stress bug” (men acknowledging their partner while wearing a weird headband = also my cry kryptonite).

Perhaps it is fitting that some of the most cry-inducing victories have happened out there on the water which, as we all know, is a liquid that has a lot in common with tears. There was Emma Twigg’s single sculls silver, which culminated in her lifting her opponent high above her head before saying “you can achieve what you want to achieve, and you look at the results that our team have got, our amazing mums, I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud or emotional in my life.”

Those amazing mums she’s referring to were, of course, Brooke Francis and Lucy Spoors. Taking out the gold medal for the double sculls, they also took out the gold in biggest couch cry yet. Collapsing into each other in tears during the national anthem, if the pair haven’t got you going at that point then I’d highly recommend looking through the YouTube comments. “Two amazing mums win Gold for NZ” said one. “Happy fast waka girls Kia Ora” said another.

Just overnight we’ve had a few more high tide @ the tear duct moments. There was the silver-winning women’s sprint team, who made heartfelt mention of their late team mate Olivia Podmore. “So special to have her in my heart and I know that she’s here with so many people right now,” said an visibly emotional Shaane Fulton. And then there was Finn Butcher, who achieved what my partner could not in winning the gold medal for kayaking without vomiting.

Win or lose, it’s all just life, as Tom Walsh would say. At the end of the day, we are all just sappy old sacks full of hopes, dreams and feelings, who often need just one little moment to remind us of that. For some, that moment might come after losing a race you have trained for your entire life. For others, that moment might come while you are sobbing into your cereal in front of a silent TV at dawn because a local trampolinist is sitting by himself and maybe seems lonely.

There’s a few more days to go and more medals to be won, but even more likely many tears to be shed together. God defend our teary land.