Word: citizenships
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...pride always takes center stage at the Olympics, where the medals table measures a country's worth and the victors beam as they hear their national anthems. But what happens when the athletes don't know the lyrics - or even the language? Though they're required to hold Georgian citizenship to compete under Georgia's flag in the Olympics, the Brazilian-born athletes barely speak a word of Georgian and have no family ties to the former Soviet republic. In fact, they've only visited the country a few times - to pick up their passports and presumably to finalize their...
...sports that are saturated with talent back home. For others - including, in some cases, the Olympics' governing body - it can be a violation of the very spirit of the games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) now requires a three-year waiting period between the time an athlete gets citizenship in a country and the time he or she can compete on its Olympic team. "What is not legitimate," Jacques Rogge, the IOC chief, said in 2004, "is when an athlete sells himself as a mercenary...
...1990s, when Qatar began importing Bulgarian weight lifters, one of whom, Angel Popov, won a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics under his adopted Arab name, Saif Saeed Asaad. Since then, Qatar and Bahrain have each shelled out millions of dollars to persuade athletes to change their citizenship, tossing in lucrative incentives for setting world records and bringing home Olympic gold...
...Holden, a journeyman American guard who never made it to the NBA but who has been a catalyst for the Russian national team. But the real sniping began with the "defection" of Becky Hammon, a WNBA star who signed a contract with a Russian club that helped her gain citizenship and a spot on the national team for these Games. Like Holden, the South Dakota native has no family links to Russia, and she can't read the Cyrillic on her new red passport. But as she was the 2007 runner-up MVP in the WNBA, Hammon's decision stung...
Posada's life does read like a tropical spy novel. Though he maintains Venezuelan citizenship, he has worked often with the U.S. since Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, serving in the Army and then assisting the CIA in adventures like the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Iran-Contra operation under President Reagan. In 1990, gunmen believed to be Cuban agents shot him several times in the face and torso in Guatemala but failed to kill him. Through it all, as recently declassified FBI and CIA documents indicate, he has been accused of taking part...