Naturalized Athletes at the Summer Olympic Games 2016

[DaniSRB 899]

52 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

I don’t think this thread needs to be made. While some nations and athletes should be looked down at buying/selling their nationality the vast majority that get targeted are immigrants which came before they even began taking the sport seriously or athletes whose parents or grand-parents were citizens of that nation. Quite often things turn into a witch hunt. Look at what happened in 2012 with “Plastic Brits” issue.

target of this thread are not of course mentioned cases....but countries like Bahrain where almost every athletes is bought

 

we can discuss real cases of countries who were ready to buy/athletes who were ready to sell themselves

[heywoodu 16,279]

1 hour ago, DaniSRB said:

i don't blame small countries who can barely qualify anyone

 

but countries with big population and even bigger amount of money are shame....instead to invest in their sport trying to improve their own athletes, they do sopping around the world 

 

It all depends on situations. There's a big difference between a "relatively big" country saying "here is money, compete for us please" and a relatively big country naturalizing someone who's been actually living there for years, training there for years and competed at local teams for years.

[heywoodu 16,279]

1 hour ago, dcro said:

 

So you stole an athlete from small Dominica?

 

 

It's not our fault his parents decided to come here  

[Jur 689]

For now, we only have 1 naturalized athlete qualifiyed to Rio, long distance runner Trihas Gebre, born etiophian but in a relationship with a spanish guy for more than four years.

But a lot more are going to be added to the list. Spain has a lot of cuban/moroccoan immigration and lot of our athletic team are actually foreign borns. But I'm not against them in our team, we don't pay them to stay with us, and usually our moroccoan athletes just started their carreers as athletes once living in Spain.

 

I think the federation has learned for they mistakes. Back in the day they pretty much give citizenship to the first athlete they could find, and the doping bans from Josephine Onyia and Bezabeh had turned a lot of people against the naturalized athletes of these days. Orlando Ortega received a lot of negative vibe from public and athletes when he obtained spanish nacionality, for example. And fans still attack people like Adel Mechaal who has been living in Spain since he has 3 years old.

 

Spain as a country is an advanced society for a lot of things but we still has problems with racisim in sport.

[AmericanHero40 243]

A lot of the Israeli Olympians are naturalized

 

* Hanna Minnenko Knyazeyva represented Ukraine in London and won silver in Beijing for Israel

* Andrea Muraz was swimming for USA and now will represent Israel in Rio

* Marharyta Drozhon Javelin

* Gymanstics - Alex Shatilov

* Shooting - Sergey Richter

[NikolaB 452]

1 hour ago, bestmen said:

the Western Sahara should participate

Under the flag of Morocco where they belong.   

[NearPup 3,646]

Quite a few Canadian athletes have dual citizenship or where born abroad and presumably could compete for another country, for example Cynthia Meyer, Santo Condoreli, Michel Li, Ashton Baumann, Shawn Barber and Michelle Williams could all conceivably compete for another country.

 

Of the current Olympians on Canada's team only one was potentially naturalized early (Eugene Wang), ahead of the London games. But outside of pairs skating (where it is sometimes necessary to change country in order to find a good partner) there's little example of people that don't already have Canadian citizenship (like Ted-Jan Bloemen) moving to Canada specifically to compete. Usually when athletes from abroad move to Canada it's for personal reasons.

 

There is also the fun country-example of Taylor Ruck, who has barely lived in Canada and could trivially become a naturalized American but has chosen not to do so.

Edited May 5, 2016 by Near

[bestmen 2,913]

Juste maintenant , NikolaB a déclaré:

Under the flag of Morocco where they belong.   

LOL no they have been colonized , just learn their history

[NikolaB 452]

5 minutes ago, bestmen said:

LOL no they have been colonized , just learn their history

Colonized by whom?

[Pavlo 149]

12 minut temu, bestmen napisał:

LOL no they have been colonized , just learn their history

stop with politics, we all know Algeria is pro-Polisario to weakness Morocco. This does not mean i don`t think that Western Sahara shouldn`t be independent, i do, but plz stop with politics here

Edited May 5, 2016 by Pavlo