Beach Volleyball at the Summer Olympic Games Paris 2024

heywoodu · June 29

33 minutes ago, phelps said:

not enough, if he's still here to play beach volleyball at the Olympics in his prime age

That's not for us to decide though. He was punished according to law, I'm not a big fan of the often-heard 'but then the law is too soft!' argument whenever someone's opinion is different than the actual law. The judge has zero right to make a call about whether or not he is eligible to play (despite the judge originally seeming to think the opposite). He qualified, and so he is eligible to play. And no, there is no reason to seriously think he is going to attack some random minors in the Olympic village, that is a ludicrous insinuation by the CNN lady.

kungshamra71 · July 1

On 6/29/2024 at 11:46 AM, phelps said:

not enough, if he's still here to play beach volleyball at the Olympics in his prime age

Just heard about this today for the first time. It's interesting that i live here and did not even heard about this before, that there would be a convicted child rapist playing in Paris Olympics representing the netherlands.

Even believing that he already was "rightfully punished", and given the exponential proportion this might take on social networks (tiktok and twitter in particular), i wonder how it will be for him during his stay at olympic village or during matches.

Few things have this much unanimous disgust for every world nation as raping a child so i predict difficult times for him.

Faramir · July 2

21 hours ago, kungshamra71 said:

Just heard about this today for the first time. It's interesting that i live here and did not even heard about this before, that there would be a convicted child rapist playing in Paris Olympics representing the netherlands.

Even believing that he already was "rightfully punished", and given the exponential proportion this might take on social networks (tiktok and twitter in particular), i wonder how it will be for him during his stay at olympic village or during matches.

Few things have this much unanimous disgust for every world nation as raping a child so i predict difficult times for him.

I don't care about him (maybe he even likes to be insulted and called rapist, who knows) but this seems an unwise decision by the NOC, if the news spread the whole Dutch team won't be the people's favorite for sure. They must have some code of ethics that would have allowed them to pick Brouwer-Meeuwsen instead of this guy.

NearPup · July 2

Woke has gone too far, you can’t even rape a child and then go to the Olympics without people complaining smh.

Legally there is nothing wrong going on, though if van de Velde qualifies for LA I certainly hope the US will denny him entry into the country. But morally, I think it does say something about the morals of the people running the Dutch NOC that they are more comfortable having an unrepentant child rapist on the team than a golfer that isn’t in the top 50 in the world ranking.

I would be a bit more forgiving if this was an NOC like the US or Canada that rarely decline quotas, rather than an NOC like the Netherlands or New Zealand who routinely turn down quotas from athletes that might “embarrass” them.

Edited July 2 by NearPup

Faramir · July 2

50 minutes ago, NearPup said:

I think it does say something about the morals of the people running the Dutch NOC that they are more comfortable having an unrepentant child rapist on the team than a golfer that isn’t in the top 50 in the world ranking.

"a matter of costs", replacing a beach volleyball pair with another one doesn't make any difference

NearPup · July 2

1 minute ago, Faramir said:

"a matter of costs", replacing a beach volleyball pair with another one doesn't make any difference

I specifically chose the golf example because that isn’t a matter of cost for the NOC.

And ya, in this case they wouldn’t even have to decline a quota, they could just pick a team that is one spot lower in the world ranking.

Noorderling29 · July 2

So they are allowed to play on the World Tour, but not at the Olympics. Very logical.

AsensioWillemsen · July 3

They made a clear statement back in whatever, 2018, when the decision was made a year after he went free from his crimes. We don't know exactly whatever happened exactly, it seems to be some case of grooming and drugging which makes a single year sentence sound pretty light to me, then again there must be some reason it isn't rape under dutch law, it's not like people are getting raped left, right and center here (which some people seem to think now, just as much as that we are all racist because of the Sinterklaas traditions)

Even under British law he woul have served 4 years and been free in 2020, then he could technically still have appeared. I don't think of athletes as some sort of saints and that's just how it is. There has been a football player here who killed a child because he drove way too fast on the highway while drunk, but he is still playing football just as much in some eastern country as well.

If there is a standard I would say that's up to the IOC to decide, not to our NOC. Otherwise I do not see a difference between them participating in any other tournament the last 6 years rather than the Olympics. If the IOC says 'we do not stand for this conduct and this is not in line with Olympic guidelines' or something like that, I can totally agree with that, but I don't think it is for the NOC to decide on history outside of the sport if someone should not represent a country at the Olympics when they did represent the same country at numerous other tournaments. In the end, it is just clickbait the media kicks on. Otherwise this should have come up somewhere prior in the past six years.

Not going to root for him or whatever. At the Olympics I am more inclined to root for Dutchies than others, but there have been more cases of Dutchies I definitely won't root for and this is just another one. I just hope this won't lead to extra backlash on our other athletes, which I see some people doing on reddit already. They don't have anything to do with this or the decision that has been made by the NOC.