Why did the Frenchman rejoice?
Suddenly, the Olympic men’s football tournament, which is usually only of interest towards the final phase, has caught the eye. The first match of the Olympic Games, Argentina-Morocco, was postponed for two hours due to the riots and was only completed then. And now the South Americans are once again at the centre of the scandal. In the quarter-finals, Argentina lost to France 0-1, but the main Argentine media are not talking about their team’s withdrawal from the 2024 Games, but about the brawl that broke out immediately after the match.
…but the IOC still allowed the boxer to compete in the 2024 Games, where he beat the girls. Photo: Reuters
No one doubted that this would be a heated match. Just a year and a half ago, the Argentines beat the French in the World Cup final, and recently a video went viral on the Internet in which players from the Argentine national team, which had just won the Copa America, sang a chant about the French with racist overtones. And although the players themselves later publicly apologized, the French players were vengeful.
Immediately after the match, the home team ran to the visitors’ stands to celebrate the victory. And so the fight began.
“I’m very angry because the French went to where our families were sitting. They wanted to celebrate their success in front of our families,” Mundo Albiceleste quoted Argentina defender Nicolás Otamendi as saying.
Even the French national team coach, Thierry Henry, had to apologize, saying that this is not what one wants to see on the football field. In fact, Argentine journalists write, the French footballers themselves have sunk to the level of those they wanted to take revenge on.
“I never said anything bad about them,” says national team midfielder Lucas Beltrán, “but they insulted us, they called us racists, I invite them all to Argentina, to see what we really are.”
Circus on the Seine
Another long-standing scandal of the Olympic Games is the pollution of the River Seine, where some of the triathlon starts have already taken place and open water swimming competitions are planned. Due to the high concentration of E. coli, training was repeatedly postponed and then the start of the men’s triathlon had to be postponed. As a result, both women’s and men’s races were held. The broadcast showed images of athletes feeling ill after swimming; the athletes themselves spoke of the difficult flow of the river and complained to the organisers.
“A beautiful image and a stage were important to them. The health of the athletes was the last thing on their minds. We are a bit like clowns in a circus. They brought us here and we have to go through everything. This is what it is,” said the indignant Spaniard Miriam Casillas in conversation with Marca.
Among those who fell ill was Kazakhstan’s representative Ekaterina Shabalina. One can understand the surprise of the Kazakh press after the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, started making puns: “Following the complaints of the athletes, Bach called the triathlon competition “sensational.”
By the way, there is a high probability that open water swimming will be held at the reserve venue, and the triathlon relay should take place today. But will it happen?
When a woman is beaten
There was also a fire in the boxing ring. In the round of 16 in the up to 66 kg weight category, Italian Angela Carini refused to continue the fight against Algerian representative Iman Khelif, who failed the gender test at the 2023 World Championships, but was still able to participate in the Olympic Games.
“The ring is my life, I am used to defending myself firmly from blows and I have always been a real fighter, never giving up, but this time I was so confused that, thinking about my family and my health, I decided to end this fight immediately,” Angela Carini said in an exclusive interview with Italian publication FanPage.
“That night in the ring, common sense opposed an insane ideology that wants to equalize us all according to gender.”
Almost the entire Italian public defended her, as evidenced by the violent reaction on social media. And Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met Angela Carini, urged her “not to give up” and expressed her principled position on what happened.
“I believe that athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not be allowed to compete in women’s competitions, not because we want to discriminate against anyone, but to protect the right of female athletes to have the opportunity to compete on equal terms,” Meloni said. Now the prime minister has arrived in the French capital to support the Italian team.
“A truly anti-Olympic scene: shame on those bureaucrats who allowed the match to clearly not be on a level playing field,” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said more bluntly.
Representatives of local government institutions did not stand aside either. The municipal administration of Fiumicino (Lazio region) intends to award a medal to Angela Carini for “embodied the true values of sport”. “What happened in Paris to the detriment of our athlete Angela Carini has nothing to do with sport,” said sports adviser Federico Poggio. That night in the ring, common sense opposed a crazy ideology that wants to equalize us all based on gender.”
Where does the weight difference come from?
“How was it possible that our 81-kilogram judoka was forced to fight against an opponent who weighed almost 60 kg more than him?” – this was the question asked by South Korean newspapers, commenting on the results of the mixed team judo in Paris.
In fact, such a situation, which the Korean media called “unimaginable”, occurred in the quarterfinals of the competition. In the category of over 90 kg, Korean Lee Jung Hwan entered the fight against the legendary French judoka Teddy Riner. The weight of the former was 139 kg with a height of 203 cm, while the Korean weighed only 81 kg and 177 cm.
“The confluence of circumstances and the consequence of the ‘gaps’ in representation in the weight categories,” is how the South Korean publication “Chosun Spochhy” sums up the reasons. In a match the day before, the South Korean judoka weighing 135 kilograms Kim Min Jong suffered a ligament injury and was unable to compete against the Frenchman, with whom, by the way, he had fought the day before in the battle for gold in the individual tournament. The closest in weight was Lee Jung Hwan. This 22-year-old athlete is called the “genius of Korean judo”, but with such a weight difference with Riner, who is a talented athlete, Lee lost by a clean slate. But he received a well-deserved applause from the audience for his bravery.
However, when discussing the results of the mixed doubles team event, South Korean publications paint a rosy picture. The fact is that the South Korean team eventually won bronze, snatching this medal from the Germans in a tense fight with a score of 4-3.
