According to Meeuwsen, cross-border behavior is about the roots of sport, the DNA of sport. “That moves between two extremes. On the one hand, sport is a game. On the other hand, sport is a struggle. We want sport to make people stronger through struggle. Both sides can escalate. After all those cries for help in sport, it’s about finding of a new balance.”
Hendriks: “Everyone knows that if you want to take your fitness to a higher level, you end up with training sessions that you have to bite through. Training that you know hurts. You have to accept that excelling is not always fun. But that if it’s not fun, it’s not directly transgressive behavior.”
Distribution of top sports funds
According to Meeuwsen, the distribution of top sports funds by NOC*NSF plays a role in unacceptable behaviour.
NOC*NSF determines which association will receive more or less money in the four-year Olympic cycle on the basis of potential and medal options. “Sport has become part of an economic model. If you combine profit maximization with wanting to win, you install a certain morality that means that you have to stretch boundaries.”
Hendricks disagrees. “Ambition is not a result of economic support. Ambition starts with someone. Someone decides for himself how far he or she wants to go. If you remove the incentives, it does not mean that it will be safe. That is a fallacy,” says the top sports boss of The Netherlands, who is in his last six months at NOC*NSF.
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