Questions about the ethical behavior of some Olympians have arisen since the admittance of a apparent deliberate crash by British track cycling gold medalist Philip Hindes, whose case is now becoming a controversy though no formal investigation is being done.

Hindes said his crash obeyed a team strategy. He explained “if we have a bad start we need to crash to get a restart.” The incident took place during the sprint team final. The controversy rose when Hindes added “I just crashed; I did it on purpose to get a restart, just to have the fastest ride. I did it. So it was all planned, really.”

But after the heat of the race at the official conference, he modified his comments saying he lost control of his bike. The competition was a three-lap race against the French team; after Hindes crashed, the race was restarted and at the end the British team won the race.

IOC spokesman Mark Adams explained that the International Cycling Union said the win was not in question and that he agreed with their decision.

French officials have not formally complained about the British tactics. Mark Adams added that the International Cycling Union knows about the situation, but do not see any reason to question the results.

This is merely one of the controversies to hit the London Olympics and unfortunately not the worse of its kind. When Chinese, Indonesian and South Korean badminton teams were expelled from the Olympics, they were deliberately trying to lose their game in order to avoid a strong opponent in the knockout stages. The scandalous scenes brought on the issue of speculation in playing strategy. Mark Adams claims the British situation was different because the fans “were not deprived of a competition.”

The French team’s technical director, Isabelle Gautheron, told the Associated Press that “you have to make the most of the rules. You have to play with them in a competition and no one should complain about that,” but Gatheron said she doubted her riders would have done the same thing. She criticized Hindes, saying that he was already prepared for the crash possibility and executed it after his poor start in the race to have a chance to restart it.

Image Courtesy of   meunierd / Shutterstock.com

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About the author

Gerardo Jose Torres Montalvo
Student of Philosophy and Journalism in Universidad de Navarra, Spain. Interested in world politics, especially in Latin American issue and in political philosophy. I was born in the United States, but raised in El Salvador.

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