Posted on 02/19/2010 10:37:40 PM PST by Saije
American halfpipe bronze medalist Scotty Lago volunteered to leave the Olympics on Friday after risque pictures of him showed up on the Internet.
Lago, who was awarded his bronze medal Thursday night, was at a party, wearing a Team USA T-shirt when somebody snapped a photo of a woman kneeling below Lago's waist to kiss his medal. That picture, and another showing him sticking the medal in the woman's mouth while teammate Greg Bretz looks on, appeared Friday on the TMZ Web site.
Lago apologized to officials at the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association and decided to go home.
"Scotty Lago is a great athlete, but with that comes a responsibility of proper conduct, and his involvement in this situation is not acceptable," U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association President and CEO Bill Marolt said in an e-mail. "Scotty realizes his conduct was inappropriate. He has formally apologized and also made a decision to leave Vancouver today."
In the aftermath of several out-of-competition incidents in Turin, one of which resulted in the dismissal of freestyle skier Jeret Peterson, the USOC has made extra efforts to emphasize athletes be on their best behavior when they're at the Olympics.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
It’s not about the USOC, it’s about his potential sponsors.
Meanwhile, I read today on Drudge that the Olympics supplied thousands of condoms to athletes..Either do it or don’t. This was the biggest night of this kid’s life..doesn’t sound like he did something so awful. My gosh..the mixed messages these kids get.
“My gosh..the mixed messages these kids get.”
Nothing mixed about it, if you went to the company party as an executive, and did stuff like he was pictured doing,(eg. kissing the company logo, or demeaning the CEO’s statue), see how quickly you would last. Nope, tough lessons to learn,but life is tough.
He will be a better person for it.
....Bob
Sounds like a moron
Because Olympic atheletes are too dumb to know how to buy their own condoms
"Shame" is a perfectly good word. It should be used more often.
yitbos
Sounds like a shamefully shameless moron
Please, those pictures are not that bad. If they want to complain about something, how about the gold medal winner playing air guitar during the American National Anthem. And then begging for an invitation to meet the one.
Clearly that medal was for a much taller person......:o)
Hey Bebe wanna see the gold ?
;-{)
The only difference between now and the past is that everyone is carrying these cameras around all the time. Seriously, let him celebrate his win.
Bingo - follow the money.
I watched the vidclip on the TMZ show. A skanky looking young lady comes up to him and he hits on her asking some words to the effect of do you want to lick my medal. She does.
One of the female TMZ reporters goes ewwww, and comments about the germs the on the medal. The male reporters reply they think the friendly is probably pretty comfortable with germs.
Yes he will and kudos to the USOC for their quick action.
These athletes represent their country and should be held accountable for their actions.
...as well as the "TEAM" sponsors.
Nothing mixed about it, if you went to the company party as an executive...He's NOT a company executive at a corporate event representing some product - he's a 22 year old snowboarder doing what 22 year old snowboarders do. He got to the Olympics because he's obviously good at snowboarding, not because he signed up to be the poster child for Focus on the Family.
Furthermore, by all subsequent accounts it sounds as if Lago is a good kid - not the mindless thug some here prejudged him as being. He's a self-made athlete from a small town in New Hampshire, well liked in his community, and probably even a conservative. The local paper interviewed him when he got home from the Olympics after being booted from the village. You know what he did first? He called up his hunting buddies and made a trip to the gun range.
Furthermore, the pictures weren't that bad to begin with, and they don't even hold a candle to what routinely happens at colleges across America whenever somebody or some team in his age group wins something. The whole story is fabricated outrage by a drive-by scandal-mongering media. And it's not even a very good one.
It's typical msm bs. Trash Lago for being a normal kid and partying, then celebrate the freak who's running around in a pink fur-adorned tutu for his "courage" and "diversity."
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