Re: Re:
Oliwright said:
macbindle said:
Is Chris Froome from the UK?
Clearly not. He's not lived here. He's from Kenya.
This is a stupid topic but it pissed me off enough to sound off on it:
Your definition of nationality is, to be polite, very incomplete. IMO a dignified definition is that people belong to the countries of their birth, ancestry and long-term residence.
Anyway, Froome was born to two British parents living in Kenya, which under international law means he's British. If you'd have read his book you'd know the family considered themselves British whilst in Kenya. They'd even have Sunday roast dinners etc etc. Yes, he hasn't lived in the Uk, but neither do 10 million others who hold British passports and it doesn't change his ancestry.
Again, as other reasonable people have explained to you, it's a similar situation with Dan Martin.
The problem is, the English language does not have the facility to differentiate like, say, German
Staatsangehörigkeit and
Volksangehörigkeit. Both are translated as "nationality". Until 2008, Froome was
Staatsangehörigkeit Kenyan, but with two British parents he was
Volksangehörigkeit British. In 2008 he changed his
Staatsangehörigkeit to Britain, which as the son of two British parents he was entitled to do, and certainly this kind of thing for people with the entitlement to multiple nationalities or passports is common especially as, living and working in the EU, the British passport is probably a lot more convenient than the Kenyan one (even taking the current political situation into account). Less clear is the case where one passport is no more convenient than the other - however despite being born in Ireland and raised there, did Christopher Juul Jensen ever have
Staatsangehörigkeit Irish? I don't actually know and obviously as long as I've been aware of him he's been listed as Danish.
Heinrich Haussler is another example to use - born in Australia to a German father and an Australian mother, he was entitled to both nationalities; he used German
Staatsangehörigkeit since Germany has historically been
jus sanguinis instead of
jus solis (which had caused a great deal of trouble with second-generation migrants not being entitled to German citizenship even if born there and with no connection to their official nationality, though this has now been resolved with a) and the German nationality was much more convenient for him, but once he was established he decided he wanted to represent the country he grew up in; at a later point, no longer in the position to represent Australia in international competitions, he decided he wanted to go back to using the German nationality as he'd have more chance of being able to race events like the Worlds and Olympics that way.
Another category is the diaspora riders. Unai Etxebarria always raised a few debates on the board; born to Basque parents in Caracas, Venezuela, he moved to Durango as a child, back to his parents' homeland, and was entitled to Spanish nationality if he chose it on the same basis as Froome, however for political reasons he chose to continue to represent Venezuela. A similar situation arose with the footballer Fernando Amorebieta, who was born to Basque parents in Venezuela, raised in Iurreta (which has been subsumed by Durango to continue the parallels with Etxebarria), and so was considered eligible for Athletic Bilbao, while simultaneously retaining his Venezuelan nationality. A counterpoint is provided by tennis ace Garbiñe Muguruza, who has a Basque father and a Venezuelan mother, was born in Caracas, the family similarly moved to Spain in her youth, but they settled in Catalunya rather than País Vasco, and so Muguruza has not had the same reluctance to adopt the Spanish nationality she's entitled to that Etxebarria or Amorebieta had.
As cycling is not held as national teams except on fairly rare occasions at the Worlds, Continental Championships and Olympic Games, the number of people who carry flags of convenience for competition purposes are fairly limited, so the number of people who are designated from countries they have little connection to are few. Froome is one of the nearest that you could argue to this type of athlete, mainly as the British flag next to his name may have been a factor in his signing for Sky rather than being left to drift elsewhere, but the reasoning for that is fairly clear as I've put forward above - he was entitled to British nationality and it was more beneficial to him; same with Dan Martin using the flag of his mother - he's half-Irish so has every right to choose to represent that country, however the decision was at least in part motivated by the attitudes of British Cycling at the time meaning that the Irish federation would be more beneficial to his career at the time.
There aren't cases like we often see in other endurance sports like athletics and cross-country skiing, where we had for example a Korean biathlon relay team made up almost entirely of Russian imports at the Olympics, or the continual trading away of fringe Russian talents to the Belarusian, Ukrainian and Kazakh teams (and subsequently Ukrainians to Moldova or Romania, and also the likes of Jakov Fak moving from Croatia to Slovenia because he'd already been a de facto member of their team anyway for training purposes), or like in the athletics countries like Turkey, Bahrain and Qatar literally buying in Kenyan and Ethiopian distance runners to represent them. There are occasionally stories of this kind of thing, mostly for the women it must be said (Pavlukhina's transfer to Azerbaijan and the controversial story about Astana and Hanna Solovey coming to blows over an alleged attempted enforced transfer to Kazakhstan spring to mind), and there's also cases like Katrin Garfoot, a German who chose to represent her husband's nation, Australia, after marriage; Eugenia Bujak is an interesting case too, having been born to Polish parents in Lithuania, representing Poland, and now choosing to represent Slovenia from this year, having been based in the country for several years. There were a few examples among the men in the 90s, with the post-Wende athletes, and obviously Tchmil is the most famous example of this, with his continual nation-switching.
That's perhaps the nearest we get to what we see in football, with overspill players from countries with a surplus of talent adopting the nationality of the country they're playing in once they've been there a while, marry or similar (so not talking about the likes of Hakim Zayech, Victor Moses or - Luis Oliveira was the first I was aware of, a naturalized Belgian citizen born in Brazil who married a Belgian woman, but there are now many; Deco, Diego Costa and Marlos spring to mind immediately, and in the World Cup we've seen several, even in some very established teams - Mario Fernandes for Russia, for example. And you have the French 1998 team with several players who were given French passports because of their footballing skills, of course. Thiago is an especially interesting one, born in Italy to Brazilian parents and moving to Spain at 5, then to Brazil which was his parents' homeland but that he had never lived in before, then back to Spain when Barcelona showed interest at 14.