ISAF Youth Worlds

I would have no objection to a collective action against Israel, I find their behaviour abhorrent, almost as bad as Hammas. But the critical point is that is should be a collective action not a unilateral one. Sure anybody is individually free not to deal with Israel but you can't agree to hold an open international event and then applied unilateral sanctions according to national prejudices.

If we do not stand up to this who is next? I'm not too keen on Saudi's human rights, should we ban them in the UK? How about gay athletes in a Russian event? Perhaps women in British Sailing should be obliged to cover up in Muslim countries?

So if we are to have true World Champs, you can't go excluding people that you don't like. If you want to pick and choose, sure that is your national prerogative to hold a closed entry event but you can't claim it to be an International event under the auspices of our International body.

There were many, many people who thought that the exclusion of South African sportspeople was a damn good way of exerting pressure to end a disgraceful regime.  Is it better to wave and cheer while the representatives of a racist regime compete?

Edited by Chris 249 - 22 Jan 16 at 4:09am

Not allowing your athletes to compete in certain places and not allowing other country's athletes to perform in your abode are slightly different issues, I think, from a practical viewpoint, if not a moral one.

As far as I'm aware, if the games were to be held in Israel, I think malaysians would struggle to be able to compete in them also.  No one with a Malaysian passport can travel to Israel, as it quite clearly says so on their passports.  Whether that's a rule imposed by Israel or Malaysia I'm unsure, but I'd hope that if this was the other way round everyone would be showing equal interest. 

Originally posted by Chris 249  Greece did not allow South African athletes to play in the country as a protest against apartheid. Was that wrong?

Yes and the same answer to your similar examples.

So it was OK for the UK or Australia to ban South African athletes, but not OK for Greece to ban South African athletes?

The UK was bound to do so by the Gleneagles agreement. That is not the same as action by an individual country. I'm not entirely happy about any set of nations except the UN making such a decision but the Commonwealth is multi-regional and multi-ethnic.




Edited by blueboy - 03 Jan 16 at 10:35am