PARIS – On a flawlessly sunny Sunday morning at the base of the Eiffel Tower, a convicted child rapist played and lost an Olympic beach volleyball match.
Such a beautiful setting for such an ugly sentence.
Those who don’t know the tale of Dutch beach volleyballer Steven van de Velde, I envy you. It’s the nastiest storyline going in regards to the proud athletes of these Paris Games, and it could have been avoided had someone stood up for what’s right. But no one has, all the way from the Netherlands to the International Olympic Committee.
In 2014, van de Velde, then 19, traveled to Milton Keynes, England to see a 12-year-old girl he’d met online. According to the MK Citizen’s 2016 account of the trial, van de Velde knew her age, took her virginity and authorities were notified when she sought the morning-after pill.
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Repeat: She was 12 years old.
It was revealed in court, too, that she had “since self-harmed and taken an overdose.”
Van de Velde hasn’t denied what happened. In a 2018 interview with Dutch NOS Sport, he admitted his actions and expressed regret for “the biggest mistake of my life.”
“I made that snap decision,” he said. “I booked that ticket in the morning and flew out in the afternoon. Yeah, and as you know, things happened. We had sex, and I came back the next day. I can’t get around it. I can also keep blaming myself a hundred thousand times for it happening and how it happened.”
As van de Velde was sentenced in England to four years in prison (he served about a year due to differing laws in the Netherlands), the judge Francis Sheridan told him (per the MK Citizen), “Prior to coming to this country you were training as a potential Olympian. Your hopes of representing your country now lie as a shattered dream.”
You’d have thought so, huh?
Not only is van de Velde being allowed to compete in Paris. He’s being given special treatment. He’s not staying with other athletes or his teammate Matthew Immers in the Olympic Village. He’s permitted to skip mandatory media availability and dodge the interview area after his matches.
He therefore missed out on the uncomfortable questions that Immers faced after Sunday’s loss to Italy’s Adrian Carambula and Alex Ranghieri.
“He’s not here because he just wants to rest his mind and focus on the game,” Immers said.
“The main reason is we want to talk about sports, especially him,” said John Van Vliet, press officer for the Netherlands team. “We are very much aware that if we bring out Steven here, it won’t (be) about his sport and his performance. … It’s something that shouldn’t be brought up through sports in a tournament which he qualified for.”
Shouldn’t be brought up through sports?
Then he shouldn’t be competing here. Period.
It’s being brought up constantly. Sunday’s victorious Italian opponents even stormed off from a post-match interview session, scolding reporters for asking solely about the controversy.
That Dutch officials feel compelled to protect van de Velde and hide him away from the world’s greatest sporting spectacle demonstrates why he should not have been allowed to be a part of it in the first place.
But no one ever made that decision. His inclusion was the result of the Netherlands Volleyball Federation (Nevobo) backing him publicly. So did the country’s Olympics leadership, and IOC spokesperson Mark Adams deferred to that support Saturday when asked about van de Velde’s participation.
‘I am grateful to the Dutch Volleyball Federation,’ van de Velde said in an earlier statement released by Nevobo, ‘because they offered me, with clear conditions and agreements, a future in this beautiful sport again. But I also think back to the teenager I was, who was insecure, not ready for a life as a top class athlete and unhappy inside, because I didn’t know who I was and what I wanted.’
The whole situation is disgusting.
Anyone who’d like to view an Olympics as a unifying and inspirational force on our complicated planet – and they are – should be appalled at van de Velde’s inclusion. And appalled, too, at how those in van de Velde’s orbit keep handling the global controversy it has ignited, putting athletics ability over ethical responsibility at the one place it should be the most paramount.
Maybe something was lost in the transition to English, but I heard a lot of concern for van de Velde from Immers and Van Vliet on Sunday. Not much regard, though, for his victim or for advocates of sexual assualt victims who’ve been rightfully bothered by his presence in these Olympics.
Immers said he was “disappointed” at how “big” the story has become. Asked if he was disappointed, though, by van de Velde’s action, he replied, “No, not at all. I don’t want to talk about (those) actions at this point and all the big attention. I’ve known the guy for three years, four years now, and we’ve played every tournament, and right now they make a really big discussion of it.”
In clarifying that comment, Van Vliet said, “(Immers) has been playing with (van de Velde) many, many tournaments the last three years. It has never been an issue.”
It’s not difficult to understand why it’s an issue now, though. The Olympics isn’t like those many, many tournaments, nor should it be compared to them.
I’m all for second chances, but any attempt to coerce sympathy for van de Velde or explain his actions as some youthful mistake should cease right here:
She was 12 years old.
Nothing else matters.
Except, evidently, the Dutch winning a beach volleyball match. On Sunday morning, they didn’t even do that.
They lost. And the Paris Olympics did, too.
Reach sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@gannett.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.