In 1988, Ben Johnson, a native Jamaican competing for Canada, won the gold medal in the 100-meter dash, setting a world record. A few days later, Johnson's medal was taken away when he tested positive for steroids.
"When he won the gold, he was Canadian. When he tested positive, he was a foreigner," Wamsley says, laughing at the memory. "All of a sudden, he was no longer ours. There is no unconditional love for migrating athletes."
Nigerian Francis Obikwelu, front, runs for Portugal.
(AP)
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Going for the Green
Today, the most controversial aspect of country-jumping is the migration of African athletes to affluent nations on other continents.
In recent years, more than a dozen world-class African runners have jumped to other countries. Nigerian hurdler Gloria Alozie, who won a silver medal in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney competing for her native land, will be running for Spain this year. Francis Obikwelu, another Nigerian who won silver in Sydney, will run for Portugal. Both runners emigrated in search of better training facilities and more money.
"By taking up Spanish citizenship, I took my future into consideration," Alozie told a Nigerian newspaper. "I train in Spain -- my club, my coach, everything that I have is in Spain."
Kenya, for decades a dominant power in distance running, has suffered the most from country-jumping. In the 1990s, two Kenyan runners, Wilson Kipketer and Anderson Kiplagat, jumped to Denmark, while another, Wilson Kirwa, became a Finn. Those defections were widely denounced in Kenya, and the controversy heated up last year when at least eight Kenyan athletes jumped to the affluent Perisan Gulf nations of Qatar and Bahrain.
Last summer, Kenyan Stephen Cherono, the 2003 world-champion steeplechase runner who became a citizen of Qatar, changed his name to Saif Saeed Shaheen. He was joined by Kenya 5,000-meter runner Albert Chepkurui, who became a Qatari named Abdullah Ahmad Hassan. Meanwhile, three other Kenyan runners jumped to Bahrain -- Abel Cheruiyot, Leonard Mucheru and Gregory Konchellah, who is the son of legendary Kenyan runner Billy Konchellah.
Qatar and Bahrain lured the athletes with promises of generous benefits and lifetime pensions. But the Gulf nations' attempt to import Olympic glory ran into a problem: the rule that forbids athletes from competing for one country within three years of representing another. Qatar and Bahrain tried to get Kenya's Olympic Committee to waive the rule -- Qatar offered to build a track stadium in Kenya -- but the proud and angry Kenyans refused to go along.
"If they want to go to the Olympics in 2004, they will have to run for Kenya," Tom O'Omuombo, head of the Kenyan Olympic Committee, announced last fall. "If we compromise, it encourages misuse of the rule and exodus."
Consequently, none of Qatar's ex-Kenyans will be eligible to run in Athens, and Konchellah, who was not affected by the three-year rule, is the only ex-Kenyan eligible to compete for Bahrain this year.
The Daily Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, supported the decision to bar the defectors, denouncing them as "dinar-chasing" turncoats.
"Kenya's honor is at stake," the newspaper proclaimed. "After huge losses on the track and in personnel this year, we may be mollified by the fact that even though we will not have the services of some of our biggest names, the countries they have gone to will not either."
The Spirit of the Games
As the Kenyan brouhaha proves, Olympic country-jumping remains bitterly controversial. Boiled down, the basic argument is this: Should the Olympics be a competition between nations or between individuals free to move from nation to nation?
One fact is not in dispute: Unfettered country-jumping would improve the quality of Olympic competition. That's because some countries produce more world-class athletes than they can enter into an Olympic event. For instance, China produces most of the world's best table tennis players but it can only enter a few in the Olympics. Consequently, several excellent Chinese players won't make it to Athens while lesser players from, say, the United States, will.
