I'm not an Olympic basher, per se. The Olympics are a great excuse for a track meet. I'll be glued to the TV set and the fact that I'll have to endure Maurice Green performing his sophomoric shoulder-rolling strut several more times isn't going to dampen my enthusiasm (much).

I will watch the Olympics, although there is not nearly so much drama as NBC would like to convince me there is. True, I'm looking into one of those mini-dishes, to see if I can get some other country's coverage, but either way I'll watch every minute of every endurance event of every endurance sport from the women's triathlon to the men's marathon. And -- by and large -- I'll love it.

Some athletes won't be loving it nearly as much, though. In particular I'm thinking of Manuela Ianesi of Italy; Laura Mata of Costa Rica; and any variety of athletes from Mexico. This list is going to grow. I don't know how large, but I'll bet a buck this is the tip of the iceberg, especially in the women’s field.

In the case of the two women mentioned above, they spent much of the last four years "earning" their spot on their respective Olympic teams. Each paid their own way to races their national federations, and their world governing body, told them they ought to attend. They did this to pile up needed points so that they'd be ready and able to compete in Sydney. But none of the athletes above appear to be going. Why? Good question.

I think I know why. I hedge, because I might be wrong. It’s hard to know, because the members of both the Costa Rican national federation and Olympic committee, and the Italian national federation, are not easy to track down, now that the cat is out of the bag. Finding them is like trying to find that fella hiding out in a cave in the Great Smoky Mountains who bombed the last Olympics.

And well they should hide. I'd hide too. Because now -- after four years of "qualifying," -- the Olympics that Mata's and Ianesi's federations promised are now out of reach. Anybody's guess as to what the reasons are. Here's mine… but first: a primer on who selects the Olympic teams, taking the U.S. as an example. USA Triathlon doesn't send anybody to the Olympics. It recommends a list of athletes to the USOC, and that august body decides which athletes actually go. The USOC will almost always send the athletes recommended by the national federations (USAT, USA Track and field, etc.). All countries operate this way.

But it is no certainty that each country's national Olympic committee will take all eligible athletes. Many NOCs in fact stipulate to their daughter NFs that unless an athlete has a reasonable chance to medal, the athlete won't be sent. This is often the case in many sports. Some NOCs, like the Canadian Olympic Committee, is notoriously stingy. It would much rather send no one than send an average athlete. Canada doesn't simply treat triathlon this way, all Olympic sports are under this tight stricture. New Zealand and South Africa are the same way. The difference is, both of these countries' triathletes have known for some months, at least, that it had a stricter requirement for Olympic eligibility than simply being ITU-eligible to race in Sydney.

My guess is, a lot of NOCs -- perhaps Italy's; perhaps Mexico's, and certainly many others -- simply aren't going to send triathletes (or at least female triathletes) who have a small chance of earning a medal. All well and good, except for two things. First, some of these NOCs are going to send men who have little chance of medaling. Second, at least a few of these NOCs -- and the triathlon NFs in these countries -- seem to have decided to pretend that there was no slot awarded them. They cynically believe that if they just shut up -- if everybody shuts up -- the ignorant athlete will blissfully assume that he or she wasn't quite good enough and a slot wasn't earned.

This conspiracy of silence is especially galling to me because, again, the athlete is the one who takes it in the shorts. The dirty little secret is that the ITU appears to be alerting countries -- in particular for the women's race -- that a roll-down slot has been earned. Then the NF of that country alerts its NOC. Then the NOC tells the NF – best as I can reckon -- "No way." And the NF -- perhaps caught unawares, perhaps not -- quietly either does not respond to the ITU, or responds saying, "Thanks for the slot, but no thanks." In many cases, though, the athlete who has earned this slot is unaware that this entire transaction has taken place.

Except for one maddening little fact. Triathlonlive.com has an earnest fellow with a big fat computer on the East Coast who keeps track of such things. His name is John Walker, and he is widely considered the "rankings guru" in the sport of triathlon. He's the NORAD of triathlon. He's the early warning system. When somebody ranked (let us say) 94th in the world lets out a hoot and holler because of being granted a spot on the starting line in Sydney, Walker says, "Great, but what about (let us say) #74, and #83, from countries not yet having a full compliment of athletes?" Then faces turn red, first out of embarrassment, then out of anger. Why? Because, if the ITU is to be believed, it DID offer the slots to the proverbial #74 and #83, and the slots were refused – but without the athlete who earned the slot every knowing about it.

Personally, I don't care how embarrassed and angry people feel. If NF bureaucrats were too lazy or stupid to check with their NOCs a year or two ago to see whether their qualified athletes would be given a plane trip to Sydney then those who voted them into office (if anybody in fact did) should know it. If NOCs are going to fight a turf war with their NFs, with the athletes getting caught in the crossfire, then everybody should know about it.

The ITU is stuck between a rock and a hard place. You can place blame on their 4-year qualifying scheme, but the ITU has been pretty consistent in saying what it's going to take to get to Sydney. On the one hand, the ITU should come down hard -- damn hard -- on NFs that have dangled a Sydney slot in front of their athletes’ faces for years, only now to be "away from the office and unreachable" when the athlete wins the prize. But if Italy's, and Costa Rica's, NFs deserve to be indicted -- and I hope this is all a big misunderstanding (in which case my emailbox is open and waiting for the Italian and Costa Rican federations to explain it to me), then each countries' NOC is indicted as a co-conspirator. The ITU can ill-afford to make that kind of enemy prior to the vote, next year, on whether triathlon will or won't be on the Athen's program.

While I like the Olympics just fine, that very nice track meet is not so nice as to render me mute in the face of Ianesi, Mata, and the others who are just finding out they've been shafted by the very organizations charged with helping them. Perhaps I'm wrong in my assumptions. If so, I'd simply like the NFs and/or NOCs of those countries to respond to their athletes with an explanation as to when their bags for Sydney ought to be packed, or why they ought not to bother packing.