Dieu, la patrie et... Le plus offrant. Le cas de Viktor Ahn.

Cet article du Washington Post livre une réflexion sur ces athlètes qui préfèrent participer aux jeux pour un autre pays que leur pays d'origine. Le phénomène n'est pas nouveau, mais dans le passé les athlètes le faisaient généralement parce qu'ils n'étaient pas assez bons pour se retrouver sur leur équipe nationale. Assiste-t-on au début d'une tendance forte, celle de marchander sa participation comme l'a fait Ahn Hyun-soo (Viktor Ahn)?

 "Even under the passport-swapping norms of the Olympic movement, in which athletes have been competing for countries other than their original ones for decades, Ahn’s gambit is an extreme case, coming closer to something approximating international free agency.

The Olympics have a long tradition of athletes using familial ties or liberal naturalization policies to change their citizenship, often for the purpose of earning a chance to compete when they weren’t good enough to make their own country’s team. In other cases, richer nations have recruited athletes from poorer ones — such as Bahrain importing Kenyan distance runners — to compete for them for purposes of national prestige.

But Ahn, who had no ties to Russia before his switch, may be the first athlete, or at least the highest-profile one, to detach himself from his own country, announce his availability and solicit offers until he found one that best suited him.

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/at-sochi-2014-athletes-nationality-is-pliable/2014/02/17/42eba17e-9802-11e3-ae45-458927ccedb6_story.html?hpid=z2