The Good Sports of Iran
Another sporting event, another Iranian wiping himself off the sporting map.
The Iranian swimmer, Mohammad Bidarian, has refused to compete with his Israeli rival in the 100-meter freestyle event in Croatia.
Bidarian advanced to the semifinal in the 100-meter breaststroke event after he clocked a time of 52.25 seconds on Thursday morning.
Despite the fact that he had a chance to get an Olympic berth for his country, the 19-year-old Iranian national gave up the competition as he was grouped with an Israeli swimmer on Thursday evening.
Another Iranian swimmer, Mohammad Alirezaei, gained the first Olympic berth in swimming for Iran at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games on Thursday.
Alirezaei, 22, qualified for the games after he clocked a time of 1.03.03 minutes in the 100-meter breaststroke event and improved his personal best by 0.89 seconds.
Top swimmers from 13 countries have taken part in the international event which began in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik on July 10 and will conclude on July 13.
He could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just photo-shopping his Israeli opponent out of any pictures of the race.
Previously on Israellycool:
About the Author
An Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.Filed Under: General
To be fair, Mohammad is stll the favorite in the javelin catching event. We should all cheer for a new Olympic record for Mohammad in the spirit of bi-partismanship.
Mohammad was afraid of losing to the Israeli.
Welcome back Dave, I’m sorry to hear about your father.
-ron
He might not of photoshopped a picture, but he certainly photoshopped his time for the event. As a former college swimmer, I raised an eyebrow at the 52.25 second 100 meter breaststroke time. It is a level that I doubt humans (even on steroids) will ever reach.
Here is how they did it.
Originally his time was 105.25. You can see that the 5 and the .25 were part of the original time.
Iranian text editing experts using a sophisticate word processor called “word” then when in and carefully removed the 10 from 105.25. They then cut and pasted the new time of 5.25 into the article. This was too radical a change so they added back another 2 and came up with 52.25.
I know people will consider me part of a right wing conspiracy theory for pointing this out on the web, but let me assure you, I am very left wing.
Stan
[...] bears reminding that Iranian swimmer Mohammad Bidarian missed out on the Olympics, after boycotting an event in which he would have to compete against another representative of [...]