{"id":234422,"date":"2016-08-17T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T20:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=234422"},"modified":"2016-08-17T06:00:38","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T20:00:38","slug":"cnmi-remains-spectator-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cnmi-remains-spectator-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"CNMI remains a spectator in Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"White\"
White<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Swimmers from the Federated of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau topped their respective heats in the 50m freestyle race in the Rio Olympics 2016 in Brazil last week after clocking in national records of 26.17 seconds in the men\u2019s event and 29.16 and 29.19 in the women\u2019s field.<\/p>\n

The CNMI\u2019s national marks: 24.76 seconds in the men\u2019s by Kai Staal and 28.08 seconds in the women\u2019s by Nina Mosley. <\/p>\n

The Commonwealth swimmers could have been on the place of their fellow Micronesian athletes if only the CNMI is allowed to compete in the Olympics.<\/p>\n

After more than three decades since knocking on the Olympic family\u2019s doors, the CNMI has yet to gain membership from the International Olympic Committee while the rest of its neighbors in the Pacific\u2014including the tiny island of Nauru\u2014have been admitted to the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis week, as the world celebrates the Olympics, the Northern Marianas has only the bitter memories of what should have been,\u201d Northern Marianas Sports Association president Michael White posted on NMSA Facebook page.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe applied for recognition by the International Olympic Committee in the late 1980s, along with Guam and American Samoa. We were told that our application was in order. The IOC recognized Guam and American Samoa, but despite numerous promises and assurances (from then president Juan Antonio Samaranch on down), they never got around to acting on our application,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

White, in a separate message to Saipan Tribune yesterday, also clarified that IOC did not deny NMSA\/CNMI\u2019s application nor provided any explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IOC never acted on our application, despite many promises to do so. In 1995, they changed the eligibility rule, and told us that we were no longer eligible for recognition,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n

IOC\u2019s rules on admitting a nation (National Olympic Committee) based on its Charter (updated on August 2015) say \u201cto be recognized by an NOC and accepted as such NOC, a national federation must exercise a specific, real and on-going sports activity, be affiliated to an IF (international federation) recognized by the IOC, and be governed and comply in all aspects with both the Olympic Charter and the rules of its IFs. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Olympic charter, the expression \u2018country\u2019 means an independent state recognized by the international committee. The name of an NOC must reflect the territorial extent and tradition of its country and shall be subject to the approval of the IOC Executive Board,\u201d the Charter further stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe IOC changed its rules to provide that only independent countries were eligible for recognition, and told us that this meant us. So the IOC has recognized every other American territory, and I think 13 non-independent countries in all, but the Northern Marianas is still on the outside, looking in. We\u2019ve tried to ask the IOC to right the wrong which they did to us so many years ago. First, they told us to go ask the United States Olympic Committee for help. USOC ignores us. Lately, the IOC doesn\u2019t even answer our letters,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n

The NMSA head added that the CNMI does not need a clearance or certification from USOC, but the IOC told them that they should get support from USOC, so they wrote to USOC asking for help. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey have never responded,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n

Despite getting a cold shoulder from both the IOC and USOC, White said NMSA\/CNMI will keep on trying.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to use every means at our disposal to ask IOC to live up to its promises and do the right and honorable thing. I can\u2019t be more specific at this time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swimmers from the Federated of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau topped their respective heats…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":234428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,12983,12984,12985],"class_list":["post-234422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cnmi","tag-ioc","tag-noc","tag-usoc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}