Dark day in Olympic history: Convicted child molester Van de Velde takes part in the Games

Second chances are everywhere at the Olympic Games, as the city gets its third opportunity to welcome the world.

Sha’Carri Richardson is coached by Dennis Mitchell, who served a two-year doping ban as an athlete and was later filmed offering testosterone and human growth hormone to his future mentors. He was named USA Athletics’ best coach of the year last year.

Mitchell has been drinking at his sport’s Last Chance bar for so long he can barely stand, but here he is, with his all-access pass and another moment in the spotlight.

And he is not alone. There are too many athletes in Paris returning to competition after an enforced break to list them all.

Serious misjudgments – that’s the unofficial motto of the last few days – do not necessarily have to mean the end of your career, regardless of whether your name is Charlotte Dujardin or Justin Gatlin.

Missteps, mistakes and lessons learned the hard way are part of the sport’s constant search for perfect redemption.

But for some such heinous things there is no equivalence, no clear comparison in terms of consistency. Sometimes a rule for one and one for the other is an inelegant but ideal solution. There is no clear line between doping and child abuse.

Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde made his Olympic debut in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on Sunday, almost a decade to the day after he pleaded guilty to raping a 12-year-old British girl at the age of 19.

After a week of leaden skies and constant rain, the sun came out in Paris on Sunday, but it was a gloomy morning in the history of these Games.

There were some boos and jeers when he and partner Matthew Immers were introduced to the crowd for their first-round match against Italy’s Alex Ranghieri and Adrian Carambula, but anyone expecting a cacophony of condemnation had gotten off at the wrong metro stop.

But you don’t come to beach volleyball to protest – especially when seats cost upwards of £300 – and the occasional disapproval was soon replaced by la-la waves and a pumping dance track enjoyed by boisterous fans in the swaying stands. If this was a somber moment for the sport, someone forgot to tell the DJ.

“We talked about it once and want to enjoy every moment on this stage because we have given everything together over the past three years to qualify,” said Immers.

“Steven is a really nice guy. It didn’t matter to me, I played with him for two years. And now there are some people who don’t like it because it’s a big tournament.”

The moral authority of the International Olympic Committee expired many Games ago. The truth is that you cannot organize an event of this ambition and magnitude, financed with the necessary commercial billions, just by preaching about the power of sport and calling for peace. The IOC does not engage in politics, but there is hardly a more political place.

If you take a tour of the £155m headquarters, perched on a Swiss lake in Lucerne, you’ll find more lawyers than the White House. This is a place of legality and regulation, where despots and dictators shake hands while a French singer sings the lyrics to Imagine.

Olympic diplomacy requires the ability to dance deftly on a pinhead with hobnailed boots. Perhaps that’s why its long-serving president, Thomas Bach – a fencer turned lawyer turned administrator – is known for having one foot in three camps.

Friends say Bach thinks five steps ahead, a key skill in a role that requires diplomatic skills of the highest order. A small but growing number of critics, however, dismiss him as a monotonous and increasingly tone-deaf autocrat.

When he was elected to office 11 years ago, he pointed to a “sea of ​​problems” facing the Olympic movement. Bach is not a man given to exaggeration, but he may have understated his point.

The 70-year-old German has neither the flair nor the menace of a Juan Antonio Samaranch, who professionalised and commercialised the games for two decades before the turn of the century.

But he has built such an unshakable power base that allies and enemies agree he has become perhaps the most influential president in Olympic history. There was simply never any chance that Bach would intervene to prevent Van de Velde from competing here.

Every Olympic athlete must pass through an area known as the “mixed zone” after completing their competition, where the media wait to ask them questions. Van de Velde, however, has been given special permission not to speak.

He does not live with his teammates in the Olympic Village and received a special security escort when he arrived in Paris on the Eurostar from Amsterdam.

The Dutch Volleyball Federation, which nominated him, and the Dutch Olympic Committee, which approved the decision, emerge without any glory; the country’s largest newspaper published an editorial with the headline “Don’t make a former sex offender an Olympic pariah”.

The IOC insists it cannot interfere in a member association’s selection decision, while at the same time taking a tough legal approach against anyone who posts Olympic footage on social media.

Apart from Ranghieri and Carambula, who beat Van de Velde and partners 22-20, 19, 21 and 15-13, there are no winners in this story, but the biggest loser is the victim.

We have heard many opinions about Van de Velde, but only hers really matters.