Olympic Women's Football Epic Fail
Thursday 26th July 2012 | Osh
With just over 24 hours before the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, there was a major hiccup at the women’s Olympic football yesterday.
It was an incident that people didn’t expect to happen and it’s definitely an embarrassment for the Olympic organisers. As the North Korean players were being introduced before the game, South Korean flags were mistakenly displayed in the video package. In essence, it was like they were representing South Korea.
This led to the players walking off and returning to the pitch once their faces were displayed next to the North Korean flag. This delayed the kick off by up to an hour. It was an embarrassing mistake and Olympic organisers have apologized for the mistake.
The Prime Minister, David Cameron, highlighted the benefits of the games by saying “The real legacy is the inspiration to young people.”
He added: “People are going to be coming to our country over the next few weeks and seeing a really inspiring sight. That’s about people’s Olympics, not a government Olympics.”
Relations between the two nations are still tense, as they technically still remain in war after the Korean conflict during 1950-1953 ended in an armistice.
After the game, North Korea coach Sin Ui Gun said “Our team was not going to participate unless the problem was solved properly...
“Unfortunately it sometime later for the broadcast to be done again properly and we made the decision to go on with the match.”
The crowd at the game weren’t given any explanation as to why the game was delayed by an hour, which left them rather frustrated. BBC Scotland football reporter Alasdair Lamont said: “They were simply given a couple of messages saying there was ‘an issue behind the scene, we’re doing our best to resolve it’ and that was basically it.”
One spectator told BBC Radio 5 Live “An announcement was made that there was a technical problem behind the scenes, and even when the players came back on, they came on for a second warm-up, and quite a large portion of the crowd started booing.”
The two nations are set to lock horns in the first round of the men’s Olympic table tennis after they were drawn against each other on Wednesday.
Hopefully this embarrassing mistake is a one off and there won’t be any mistakes throughout the Olympics.
It feels as if everyone involved with the Olympics is ready, so let’s hope Danny Boyle and his team put on a magnificent opening ceremony to show why London is ready to showpiece the best sporting event and to show why London is the best city in the world!
By Hiten Mandalia