Beatie's post on FB:
According to the BBC, the reason the date was changed is because of a location change. Being the new location of the marathon, in Sapporo Park which is 500 miles north of Tokyo, they changed the entire range of events from August 2 to August 6-9, with the women's marathon on August 8.
I don't see them changing the schedule for one person. If, however, it can become a movement, with many people talking about it and contacting them and the issue of religious freedom being raised and they can be seen as being more inclusive, then perhaps it might be worth their consideration.
The Press Office for the IOC Media team can be reached at pressoffice@olympic.org . I do not know if they are the right people for this, but I looked around the IOC site and could not find any more specific contact for any administrative team that might deal with this. If someone else knows, please share.
I recommend writing or calling the relevant Olympic committees to protest the change and request changing it back so our religious representative can participate. And if they refuse to, we will be proud that our representative stays true to her ideals.
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A few months back the chess world championship was scheduled to be held in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis announced that no Israelis could attend. Now, of all the players, maybe a handful were Israeli, and probably every one of them had another passport (Russian, etc.) they could use. And some of them planned to do so.
ReplyDeleteBut my cousin, Israel's top player, led a revolt, and the rest of the team fell into line. And that got the attention of the world champion who is Norwegian (and not Jewish), and he joined the boycott. And the championship was moved to another country.