Claudius looks forward to the Games

Andy O'Brien

Bengal’s sportsman of the millennium, four-time hockey Olympian Leslie Claudius is in Sydney and looking forward to the Olympic Games as if he is competing in it. Claudius has many relatives, including his eldest son Leslie Junior, living in Sydney.

But of all his sojourns to the Olympic Games this one was the hardest. Apparently, the former Indian captain had some delay in getting his visa despite the fact that he had visited Australia many times in the past.

Reports have it that Australian immigration officials have become very strict in granting visas during the Games because of fears of smuggling, illegal entries and overstaying.

Surely, the man who won three gold medals and one silver and is in the Guinness Book of World records deserves special treatment by a nation and city which is hosting an Olympic Games.

Anyway, things are sorted out now and Claudius is in Sydney and looking forward to the Games, especially the hockey tournament from which he hopes India will bring back lost glory by winning a medal.

Probably forewarned by the cricket betting scandal, the International Olympic Committee has threatened to strip athletes of medals or expel them from competition if they are caught betting on themselves or other competitors at the Games.

The Australian Olympic Committee has already said that there is no way they can prevent their athletes from betting – on themselves or on others - during the Games, but the IOC has said athletes would face the ethics commission if they were found to be gambling.

An IOC ethics commission report has found that gambling breaches the principles and ethics of the Olympic charter.

But the Olympic charter is not specific enough about gambling and some IOC officers plan to have it written explicitly into the charter for future Games.

Mr Gosper said he is hoping to have it ready for the Sydney Games. But Dr Rogge said the athletes had already signed an entry form based on the existing charter's wording.

"We would have to get a whole new notification process for the athletes to sign, which would be impossible to do before Sydney," Dr Rogge said. "We have run out of time. But if they do gamble, we will still claim they have not respected the fair play rules of the charter, and while it is less stringent and less clear-cut than a specific rule, it is still there."

Officials of the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport are expecting an increased workload for the division of the court, which will operate 24 hours a day during the Games.

CAS executive Matthew Reeb said athletes and officials had become more aware of the court in the past year and he is anticipating more cases than at Atlanta.

An Australian athlete has called on Olympic officials to admit he was cheated out of a medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Former Australian champion Ian Campbell, now living in the United States, has returned for the Sydney Games to appeal to the Australian Olympic Committee to concede that Soviet officials conspired to foul him in the final of the triple jump, allowing their own athletes to win gold and silver medals.

Campbell, who says he has lived with the anguish of being robbed of the leap of his life for 20 years, has the support of some of the world's top former athletes and past Australian track and field officials. "I hope someone in officialdom, such as (Australian Olympic Committee president) John Coates says, `Hey, there was a problem and we need to acknowledge what happened'," he said.

Last month’s edition of the Good Weekend revealed how the event was fixed to appease a disgruntled footwear manufacturer.

Campbell, who was placed fifth, said he was grateful the circumstances of July 25, 1980, at Lenin Stadium had been finally investigated.

"I appreciate that something which has been talked about in track and field circles for a long time has been exposed," he said.

"If I had spent 20 years ringing up Olympic officials and journalists and complained about the cheating, my claims would have had a hollow ring."

Campbell said he was unaware of the motive for the Soviet cheating - to placate Mizuno, the Japanese shoe company, whose investment in the torch relay had been devalued by the Soviet Union's two most prominent athletes turning up for the opening ceremony in the wrong footwear.

"All I know is that the final of the triple jump was an absolute shambles all the way round," Campbell said.

"Whatever was supposed to be going on, the officials lost control of it."

The fix was made more farcical because the ultimate silver medallist, Victor Saneyev, claims he should have won the gold medal.

Saneyev, who had won the event at the three previous Olympics, now lives in Sydney where he is a jumps coach at the New South Wales Institute of Sport.

Saneyev claims officials conspired to give the gold medal to compatriot Jaak Uudmae because of internal Soviet politics.

Coates said he empathised with Campbell but said no review was possible.

"The difference now is that following calls for medals to be reissued in the wake of what's come out of East Germany, the International Olympic Committee has amended the Olympic charter to provide that `no decision taken in the context of the Olympic Games can be challenged for three years from the day of the closing ceremony of such Games'," he said.

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