Flag Relay

Nigerian Francis Obikwelu, front, runs for Portugal. (AP)

Should a Chinese player be free to move to the United States and take the job of a less talented American? Should a rich country like the United States or Qatar be able to buy Olympic gold the way the New York Yankees buy pennants?

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, has expressed his dismay about the practice. "From a moral point of view, we should avoid this transfer market in athletes," he said earlier this year. "What we don't like is athletes being lured by large incentives by other countries and giving them a passport when they arrive at the airport."

C. Peter Goplerud, a legal scholar and co-author of "Sports Law: Cases and Materials," shares Rogge's concerns about country-jumping. "It's not good for the Olympics, assuming that we believe in the purity of the Olympics as an arena for competition between the nations of the world."

But Roger G. Noll, a Stanford University economics professor who studies the business of sport, disagrees: "To argue that flag-jumping is a bad idea, you must be willing to argue that it is a good thing to have most places at the Olympics decided by national boundaries and citizenship, not merit."

Over at Fast Eddie's sports bar on K Street NW, Olympic fans came out strongly against country-jumping.

"I think it takes away from the spirit of the Olympics," said bartender Steve Wilson, 30, of Washington. "You're supposed to be competing for your country."

"I don't think it's right," said Goeff Thomas, 23, a consultant and soccer fan from Washington. "I think people with no true claim to citizenship should not be allowed to compete on the Olympic stage."

While fans and experts debate the issue abstractly, the athletes displaced by country-jumpers sound like any other worker angry at losing his job to an immigrant.

"It's simply not fair," said Giorgos Lebesis, one of the Greek baseball players who lost his Olympic job to an American. "We've been working very hard for three straight years for this goal, and for what?"

"I am gobsmacked," said Iwan Thomas, the British runner who lost his Olympic spot when American Malachi Davis showed up with a brand-new British passport. "I have been robbed of my dream."

On and on it goes. The debate over country-jumping will no doubt last long after the 2004 Athens Games are over.

Meanwhile, one thing is certain: For this year at least, to assume that the Greek Olympic baseball team is composed of Greeks from Greece makes no more sense than assuming that the New York Yankees are composed of yankees from New York.