Summary: From the land of dreams comes a tale of nightmares

see also The battle for Vancouver 2008-2010

Shyam Dhakal, 28, is the best ever Nepali ski racer who holds the national FIS points record and on 15 February 2009 finished 66th in the World Alpine Ski Championships at Val D’Isere, France, the first athlete ever from his nation to compete at world level in the blue ribbon of winter sports.

He trained hard every season since 2002 at the Nepal Ski Team base in nearby Les Arcs and, like many other poor boys from the developing world, it was his childhood ambition to be a sportsman and represent his country at the Olympic Games. So when he chanced to meet Richard Morley, the British ski team manager, in the Kathmandu hotel where he worked in late 2001, he thought his lucky day had finally arrived.

Richard Morley explains the problems of corruption in Nepal in a press conference in 2004	Shyam Dhakal

But sadly he was terribly wrong. After so much training, so many sacrifices and so many risks his ambitions to be the first ever Olympic Alpine skier for Nepal have been cruelly thwarted not by failure on the race slopes or injury or illness, but actually through the corruption and mismanagement of the very Olympic system that he worked so hard and sacrificed so much to uphold.

For Shyam Dhakal will not be at the Olympic Games in Vancouver simply because he refused the demands of his National Olympic Committee to be dishonest and sign false papers that would allow them to embezzle IOC funds. And so they punished him by delaying his funding until it was too late for him to train – and even denying him the certification he needed for the Schengen visa to reach the training slopes. And the IOC has done nothing so far to protect him.

This is the sad story of a dream that was destroyed by ruthless greed and official indifference. And it is a story that we are certain is happening to other young athletes all over the world.

This website is dedicated to help draw public attention to the foulness of corruption in sport, the lives and personal dreams that it ruins and the awesome difficulty of fighting it.

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