Re: If you were a British Athlete
 

when you think about things,the descision to take part/or not is down to the "Big Wigs" that run athletics. its there responsibilty to make any descision or ruling.:)

Re: If you were a British Athlete
 

When countrie have boycotted The Olympics its been the governments of these countries that have made the decision not the actuall athletes themselves. Like a other people have said athletes are only interested in sport and want to get on with it, When the Yanks pulled out of the 1980 games in Moscow it was a protest about Afghanistan, Britain left the athletes to make their own decision on wether to go or not.

Re: If you were a British Athlete
 

Well apparently there has been a U-turn on this now and the British athletes are not going to be asked to sign this contract which effectively gags them......Australian and American athletes are not being asked to sign anything like this, so the powers that be have had a rethink......Amnesty International have also kicked up a bit of a fuss about it too.

Re: If you were a British Athlete
 

I think you should never criticise another country because no matter where you will be going home to at the end of the day, its going to be far from perfect.

Whilst China has vastly different politics to England, they operate as they see it necessary and that should be that. It's not our place to visit their country and start a protest when we are there as guests and competitors, if anything it's just rude and embarrassing.

As for clauses like that, I think many countries have similar policy. It makes sense to really, because you might think the sum shines out of Englands backside but people from China and other places obviously see it very different compared to their own home country and could protest about something we do.

You dont often notice the bad until you've been somewhere else for a while and returned.