Judo fans deserve medals for jeering Egyptian

THE EGYPTIAN judoka who flat out refused the hand of his Israeli conqueror in Rio last week, repeatedly and ostentatiously shying away as Or Sasson disbelievingly tried to acknowledge his opponent, deserved to be booed by the few spectators gathered to watch an Olympic sport with a strong honour code. While some in Ken Livingstone’s set may well seek to excuse Islam El Shehaby’s one-man stand, this act of refusal by the athlete — under intense pressure from militants back home to simply refuse to compete with an Israeli — feeds into a nasty anti-Semitism that can’t be allowed to slide. The tricky part? The International Olympic Committee don’t have a great record on enforcing their policy of keeping sports and politics separate. And it’s worth asking whether they should even try. Presumably they took their stand against political grandstanding some time post-1936, a Games in which El Shehaby might have felt right at home. You may also ask how the organising of teams into nation states, all flying their flags at the opening ceremony and during medal ceremonies where anthems are played, fits into their lofty world view. If you really want the IOC, national associations and individual sporting bodies to enforce zero tolerance on political protests, you would presumably be happy to see El Shehaby suffer some sanction. But that means, by extension, that you agree retrospectively with Tommie Smith and John Carlos being suspended and sent home from Mexico back in ’68 for their Black Power podium salute. Fortunately, sometimes, fans can be relied upon to do the right thing. Those who jeered the Egyptian for his disgraceful snub deserve medals for understanding the essence of sport — play hard, fight like the devil, then shake hands and applaud the efforts of the other guy or girl — more instinctively than some of the zealots confusing God-given talent with a duty to propagate their religious intolerance.