Convicted Child Rapist To Represent Netherlands' Volleyball Team In Olympics, Yet Country Won't Send Golfers
The Netherlands recently came to a decision not to send three of four Dutch golfers to the Paris Olympics who qualified for the upcoming Games, admitting that it doesn't believe they can contend for a medal. The country has no issue sending a convicted child rapist to Paris to represent the Dutch, however.
Steven van de Velde is set to represent the Netherlands in the 2024 Olympics as a member of the men's beach volleyball team, eight years after being convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl.
Fox News reports that in 2014, just days before he turned 19 years old, van de Velde flew to England to meet the victim, where he raped her after giving her alcohol.
He was sentenced to four years in prison two years later but was released after just one year. Van de Velde is and will be a registered sex offender in the United Kingdom for the rest of his life. The victim has since self-harmed and once overdosed.
Steven van de Velde was convicted of rape eight years ago, but will represent the Netherlands in the Paris Olympics. (Photo by Andrea Kareth /SEPA.Media /Getty Images)
Van de Velde returned to volleyball and international competitions after his release from prison in 2017. Now, the Dutch volleyball federation, Nevobo, believes van de Velde "meets all the qualification requirements for the Olympic Games and is therefore part of the team."
"He was convicted at the time according to English law, and he has served his sentence. From then on, we have been in constant contact with Steven, who has now been fully reintegrated into the Dutch volleyball community," Nevobo said in a statement.
The federation also stated, "he is proving to be an exemplary professional and human being."
It is unfathomable on every level to think a country would not only send a convicted rapist to represent it on any stage imaginable, but to claim that person is "proving to be an exemplary" human being is next-level ludicrous.
When you contrast the Dutch allowing, and in some ways promoting this to happen, to how they've handled the situation in golf it is utterly mindblowing.
As anyone could have predicted, the Dutch Volleyball Association X account turned off replies when sharing a statement about van de Velde making the volleyball team.
Anne van Dam and Demi Weber are two Dutch women who qualified for the Games, while Joost Luiten and Darius van Driel accomplished the same on the men's side. Of those four, only van Dam will head to Paris to compete.
The Netherlands Olympic Committee/Dutch Sports Federation has an internal set of standards for each sport to meet a "realistic chance" of placing inside the Top Eight in the Olympics. The Dutch committee made it as clear as possible that it doesn't believe three of the four qualified players have a legitimate chance to contend for a Top Eight spot in Paris.
"After a careful analysis of the results in golf, it has become clear that the requirement from the IOC does not provide sufficient prospect of achieving a position in the top eight of the field," the federation said in a statement from NOS, a Dutch outlet.
The field of golfers at the Olympics is strong, but it's only made up of 60 players, making the probability of anyone in the field finishing in the Top Eight much higher than a typical tournament field of 140+ players.