David Leggat: Flounce or foul-up... the way home can be made interesting

COMMENT

People have been leaving the Olympic Games competitions in all sorts of ways.

The vast majority of competitors take the standard route - dreary old elimination, or with a medal round their necks.

The officials pack their bags and head for the sightseeing routes when their events are finished.

But that can be dull, and why be dull when there are much more inventive ways in which to depart the Games - or in one unfortunate case, this life?

Take Anthony Crea, fitness trainer for the Australian soccer team.

He copped a US$10,000 fine from world governing body Fifa and a five-game ban for making an offensive gesture at the Serbia and Montenegro substitutes bench.

Then consider retiring Russian gymnastic diva Svetlana Khorkina.

Aiming for her third successive gold medal on the uneven bars, she made a boo-boo.

The 25-year-old lost her grip on the upper bar, hung a moment then let go. It was her farewell performance on the Olympic stage and she wasn't about to wait around for the outcome.

Before the final competitor had started her routine, Khorkina, who has posed for Russian Playboy and has been the most watched figure in the gymnastic competition, flounced - and that is the only word to describe it - out of the arena and into retirement.

Remember 14-year-old Korean swimmer Park Tae-Hwan? No, I didn't think you would.

His false start in a heat of the 400m men's freestyle meant his Games began and ended before his only race began.

And now we've had drama at the fencing.

Hungarian referee Joszef Hidasi has been banned for two years after mis-scoring the men's team foil final.

Hidasi wrongly awarded Italy six points instead of China. The Chinese lost 45-42. Do the maths and figure out the enormity of his, er, mistake.

Fencing's world body, FIE, did not even wait for the questions about how this went wrong.

Putting two and two together and coming up with something smelly, a spokesman moved swiftly to pour petrol on the fire already raging between the sword-wielding nations.

There would be no investigation, said Jochen Faerber.

Why? "If we ask him if he took money and he says no what can we do?"

Now the sad but true part. A 20-year-old Greek soldier was shot dead after apparently playing Russian roulette with a policeman.

The pair were guarding an Olympic village for team escorts - which is not what it might sound like - near the venue for the mountain biking competition which starts on Friday.

It seems they pair were whiling away the pre-dawn hours by playing with a revolver containing a single bullet. The policeman is being questioned over the incident.