Give It Up Darcy!

What on earth is this kid doing? Is he being poorly led or is he just very stupid? Perhaps both.

A young man loses his place on the Olympic Swim team after bringing grievous bodily harm onto a former team-mate and expects someone to ruffle his hair and say, “Your not so bad kid, go on, swim your little heart out.”

He was given the boot because he brought the sport into disrepute. Perhaps it’s a bit grey as to what constitutes ‘disrepute’ and I assume that is what he is trying to prove.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has already heard one appeal. They didn’t disagree with the decision by John Coates (Australian Olympic Committee President), they merely deemed that Coates can’t make the decision on his own, it must go back to the entire AOC Executive Board. They met with Darcy and his legal team this week, only to come to the same conclusion as John Coates. Finally, some closure I thought, but no, I was wrong.

Darcy left the meeting explaining his disappointment at the decision and how there was already another appeal in the works. In fact it was in the works prior to their meeting with the AOC. Seems like they were pretty confident of a negative verdict.

On what grounds could he possibly get his dismissal overturned? Surely being intoxicated and not knowing what he was doing is not good enough to win favour. Also, who cares that he has trained for most of his life, this should count for nought.

Swimming brought us tremendous role model such as Kieran Perkins, Susie O’Neil, Sam Riley, Grant Hackett & Ian Thorpe to name a few. In one abhorrent act, Nick Darcy has changed the face of swimming forever. Instead of picturing the fine specimens of humanity mentioned above we now think of a thug who couldn’t control himself in more ways than one. If that isn’t bringing the sport into disrepute I don’t know what is.