Long Track Speed Skating

A lot of bad blood has reportedly been created by a series of recent incidents where top international athletes have been denied access to the Richmond Olympic Oval in advance of this week's world single distances speed skating championships.

German, Chinese and Dutch teams have made various complaints. Some have been escorted out of the building, some have gained little or no ice time, and some have been denied into the building at all.

Kevin Crockett, a former Canadian Olympic medallist who now coaches for China, said he blames Speed Skating Canada's program director Finn Halvorsen for going too far with efforts to secure a home-ice advantage for Canada at the Oval, the site of the 2010 Olympics.

"The Canadians are acting like this is their fort, like this is a fort that's being intruded upon," he told the Toronto Star. "The Canadian athletes have kind of inherited this (crappy) attitude. They all believe they actually have an advantage and, in the meantime, they're not acting like Canadians. There's no fairness, there's no fair play here, there's nothing like that."

"I understand there's sensitive areas to the Oval," said Crockett. "We weren't in the Canadian change room and we're not back in the Own the Podium storage room, sniffing around at all the top-secret projects. ... It's ridiculous. I think Finn Halvorsen has started this (crappy) attitude that's spread like cancer amongst the Canadians."

The German team reportedly asked permission to train at the Oval before last weekend's World Cup final in Salt Lake City, but never got a reply.

"We were there for three days and the only thing I could do was peek through the windows to look at the venue," German coach Bart Schouten told AD Sportwereld.

There was an unpleasant incident when Halvorsen arrived at the Oval and found Dutch Olympic champion Bob de Jong in the Canadian team dressing room, chatting with Canadian coach Ingrid Paul. Halvorsen said reports there was a shouting match are "extremely exaggerated," that he simply made it clear to the Dutchman that the Canadian locker room was out of bounds.

"It is a problem when these guys just walk into our locker room where we have special things for our skaters, where we might have some testing going on that we want to have exclusive and so on," said Halvorsen -- a Norwegian who took over the Canadian program three years ago - to The Star.

De Jong claims to have been invited into the locker room.

Magnus Enfeldt, the sport and venue planning manager for the Vancouver Organizing Committee said that the matter will be discussed today at a team leaders meeting at the Oval.