by Hamish McBrearty

Created on: June 23, 2008

In this day and age where sports stars are treated as celebrities and every misstep put under the microscope, Australian swimmer Nick D'Arcy can have no complaint about being dumped from the Olympic swimming team.

While D'Arcy's alleged assault of team mate Simon Cowley is still before the courts, it is not this which got him sacked from the Australian swimming team. D'Arcy signed a Team Membership Agreement, which included a clause about bringing "the person, the person's sport or the AOC into disrepute or censure", and it is this agreement which sealed his fate.

The lack of a criminal conviction is not the core of the issue here, the negative press about D'Arcy and the team is what got him sacked. Earlier this year Western Force rugby player Matt Henjak was sacked by the Australian rugby union for an incident which left team mate Haig Sare with a broken jaw, and no charges were ever filed, although Henjak's career is now in ruins.

This is also not the first time that D'Arcy is alleged to have been involved in a late night incident, with ironman Tim Peach also claiming to have been struck by D'Arcy in the past.

His swimming talents are unquestioned, and his exclusion from the team may well cost Australia medals, but how far does the "win at all costs" attitude go? How many indiscretions are the public willing to overlook just to hear Advance Australia Fair one more time in Beijing?

D'Arcy's has not been handed a life ban, although it may well amount to that, but it as this does not appear to be an isolated incident, as he initially claimed, and he should have known better, especially since before the incident he had been at a team meeting where cricket legend Steve Waugh spoke about what an honour it is to represent Australia.

Many sports fans are frustrated by the behaviour of athletes, who seem to get away with more than most, and have shown their tolerance for loutish behaviour to be waning. Australians rightly proclaim Shane Warne to be one of the greatest bowlers of all time, but even the most true blue Aussie will concede that Warne's antics off the field have taken some of the shine off his stellar career.

At an event with the standing of the Olympics, each athlete represents not only themselves, their team mates and their sport, but their entire nation as they compete on sport's biggest stage and their conduct off the field will be scrutinised just as much as their performance on it. Do Australians really want someone like Nick D'Arcy representing them in Beijing?

Learn more about this author, Hamish McBrearty.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.