They held a tennis match Friday night, and an ethics lesson broke out.
At every venue, in every sport, the chatter is about the Olympic spirit.
Then a U.S. tennis player, James Blake, made it real.
Blake had just lost a singles semifinal match. He battled for 2 hours 52 minutes against Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, a bronze medalist at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.
The match had started slowly and turned into superb tennis. The final score was 4-6, 7-5, 11-9.
In the final game Gonzalez had four match points. Blake saved them all before finally returning a serve into the net.
So it was over. Gonzalez reached Sunday’s gold-medal match, and Blake will play for the bronze Saturday.
Turns out, it was far from over.
On the first point of the 18th game of the final set, with Gonzalez serving at 8-9, Blake tried to pass a charging Gonzalez by hitting it right at him. Gonzalez swerved, the ball landed long and Blake realized the point had been put up for Gonzalez.
Blake thought the ball had nicked Gonzalez’s racket on its way out, and if so, should have been his point. The umpire claimed not to have seen the ball touch Gonzalez’s racket.
Blake eventually turned and looked at Gonzalez, back on his baseline.
Blake appeared bothered. In his news conference, he called out Gonzalez. He said his shot had hit Gonzalez’s racket.
“In what’s supposed to be a gentleman’s sport, that’s a time when you call it on yourself,” Blake said. “Fernando looked me square in the eye and didn’t call it.”
Had Blake stopped there, it would have been a little blowup, maybe seen as little more than an angry athlete. But Blake turned it into a seminar on sports ethics.
“I’ve spoken all week about how much I’ve enjoyed my Olympic experience, how much I love the other athletes,” he said. “These guys go out and compete their hardest. Win fair and square. Lose fair and square.
“So this is a disappointing way to exit the tournament, when you not only lose the match but lose a little faith in your fellow competitor.
“We know when [the ball] touches us. And he knew that. You call it yourself because it is the right thing to do.
“Should I expect him to do that? Maybe not. Maybe I shouldn’t expect people to hold themselves to high standards of sportsmanship. But, yes, I did expect a little more in the Olympics.”
Gonzalez was taken aback.
“We are out on the court for two hours,” he said, “and I didn’t feel anything. It was just one point.”
He also said that, if he had been “100 percent sure about it” hitting his racket, he would have called it on himself.
“There is an umpire,” he said.
Blake would argue that the umpire wasn’t the issue.
“If the roles were reversed,” he said, “I’d call it on myself because I would know, if I ever didn’t … I’d still be that same little kid, and if I came off the court and my parents saw me do that, I wouldn’t have the racket back in my hands for weeks.”
