The 2024 Summer Olympics are only a week old, but have already seen their share of controversies.
From an opening ceremony act that offended millions, to international sparring over its rules for women’s boxing, to a spying scandal involving the coaching staff of a women’s soccer team, some have threatened to overshadow the actual games.
Now, a surfing judge has joined the dis-honor roll.
Ben Lowe, a veteran judge of international surfing who hails from Australia, has been dismissed from his position after an “inappropriate” photo rocketed around social media.
Taken in Tahiti, where the surfing competition is taking place (the Seine River in Paris is barely fit to swim in, forget surfing), the picture showed Lowe with arms linked with Australian surfer Ethan Ewing and the Australian national team coach Bede Durbridge, according to the U.K. Guardian.
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On Instagram, the picture was captioned “These 3 Straddie Boys doing their stuff at the Olympics.”
(“Straddie” is a reference to North Stradbroke Island in Queensland, Australia, where all three originated, according to The Guardian.)
The picture of a supposedly unbiased arbiter being all buddy-buddy with a competitor in the sport he’s supposed to be judging didn’t go over well with the International Surfing Association, the sport’s governing body.
In a statement, according to The Guardian, the association blasted the picture as “inappropriate,” and announced that Lowe is being relieved.
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“It is inappropriate for a judge to be interacting in this manner with an athlete and their team,” the statement said, according to The Guardian.
“To protect the integrity and fairness of the ongoing competition, and in accordance with the ISA Code of Conduct and IOC Code of Ethics, the ISA Executive Committee has decided to remove the judge from the judging panel for the remainder of the competition.”
Lowe, who was also a surfing judge for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has been accused of bias before, according to The Guardian. In particular, Brazilian fans suspect him of unfairly judging Brazlian star — and three-time world champion — Gabriel Medina.
Echoes of those accusations arose in the backlash to the picture on social media before Lowe was sent home.
why is judge Ben Lowe still actively acting despite all the allegations made against him after Tokyo 2020? and why in this photo is he next to surfers who are in the competition that he is supposed to be impartial? #OUTJUDGE4 pic.twitter.com/vWeMhd9RUc
— Clementine Flowers (@pollyamourr) August 1, 2024
Naturally, no human activity — especially one on a scale of the international Olympics — is going to be free of problems.
But the problems arising in the 2024 games appear almost entirely self-inflicted.
Athletes, their fans and those who love sports are stuck in the position of hoping “controversy” isn’t what the Paris Games are remembered for.
