Dubai: The trend of naturalising athletes in pursuit of glory is a problem that needs to be tackled before a state of ‘total anarchy’ is reached, Egyptian official Sharif Al Erian has warned.
Al Erian, a board member at the Egyptian Olympic Committee and President of the Egyptian Modern Pentathlon Federation (EFMP), has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to implement stricter rules in this respect with the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games looming.
Rule 6.1 of the Olympic Charter states that the Games are competitions between athletes, not countries. But, to participate, athletes must be entered by a National Olympic Committee and must be nationals of that country, meaning nationality is a key issue.
For more than two decades, the phenomenon of “muscle drain” has seen sportsmen and women switch allegiance ahead of a major championship and represent a country other than the one in which they were born.
This has set the stage for accusations of buying success and added a farcical aspect to some major international competitions.
Al Erian was addressing delegates at the day-long inaugural International Conference on Sports Management and Sports Law, which was hosted and organised by the American University in the UAE on Tuesday.
After addressing the opening session entitled ‘Sports and the code of ethics’, he told Gulf News: “There needs to be a global solution to the problem so that we have a stricter set of nationalisation rules, failing which various sports may descend into total anarchy.
“We need regulations in place to control such things. Someone has to take up this issue and the proper authority would be the IOC when they meet at the next general assembly.
“We need to regulate this process of getting in athletes with a very one-sided mindset. Or else sports will suffer and will be the loser in the long run.
“The rules need to be set by the IOC and even bodies such as Fifa [football’s world governing body] have to abide by these laws. If at all there is one single aspect that needs changing in sport, then it is this issue of nationalising athletes by countries.”
