Steven van de Velde, the Dutch beach volleyball player who served time in prison for rape, received a mixture of boos and applause when he was introduced before his opening match on Sunday at the Paris Games.

Van de Velde was greeted with only a handful of boos when he first took the sand for warmups, but the hooting was louder for the more formal pre-match introduction. His teammate Matthew Immers – and all the other players appearing at the Eiffel Tower Stadium so far in the Summer Games – received nothing but cheers.

  • Visstix@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 months ago

    Well the people in charge of the olympic team at least… not the whole country. I only heard about this dude recently and he can fuck right off.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      I haven’t heard about any major protests in Amsterdam about them allowing a pedophile rapist on their Olympic team, have you?