Sports and Stuff: S&D Online

For those that do not know the story, Becky Hamilton, a WNBA player, has decided to play for the Russian Olympic team and a colleague has called her a traitor.  Traitor seems rather harsh.  My problem with this whole story is that she is allowed to do what she is doing.  Hamilton is not a citizen of Russia.  She is U.S. citizen as far as I know.  The Olympics are all about country pride, or at least that is what it is for me.  If Russia was to win, Hamilton will be standing on the medal stand with a Russian flag over her head.  That just seems wrong since there is no reason for her to be spreading Russian pride.

I admire that she wants to play in the Olympics.  She wants to be given the chance to play in the world event and wasn’t given the chance to play here in the U.S.  That is wrong for sure.  She plays in the WNBA and she wasn’t given the chance to try out for the U.S. team.  That is a different issue though.  I would not call her a traitor because she is an athlete that wants a gold medal, wants an opportunity to play, and wants to gain an experience that most of us who played sports could only dream of gaining.  I just know that I could not win a gold medal and start waving a flag from another country.  That is something that she decided is worth to do.  I am not going to judge her because of that.  The real problem is that these athletes are now able to play for whoever they want.  The Olympics just aren’t not what we seem to think they are.  It is no longer about the country teams; it is about the individual athletes.  We just have to accept that as sad as it is to many of us who enjoy the team competition of the whole thing.