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.
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 regard 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’s 2014, van de Velde, then 19, traveled to Milton Keynes, England to see a 12-year-old girl he’d met online. van de Velde knew her age, took her virginity and authorities were notified when she sought the morning-after pill.
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.”
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 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.
STEVEN VEN DE VELDE STATEMENTS-
“I am grateful to the Dutch Volleyball Federation,” van de Velde said “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.”