The Olympics specializes in two rough categories of shameful behavior: In what it doesn't allow and in what it does.
In a barefaced and biased political decision, it initially denied credentials to the qualified Olympic teams from Iraq to come to Beijing and participate in the 2008 games.
But it hasn't so much as as taken notice that national Olympics authorities in both Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have prevented women from competing.
I don't how long the sham of the Olympics goes back. But certainly its claims to sportsmanlike rules have been traduced many times: in 1936 in Nazi Germany, in 1972 after the massacre of the Israeli athletes at Munich, and next month in Beijing when the most ancient of prejudices against the competence of women will be allowed to exclude athletes simply because of their gender--although there are many, many gender-specific competitions.