BERLIN (AFP) — Olympic silver medallist Imke Duplitzer says athletes contemplating boycotting the Beijing Olympics in August risk damaging their careers.
The 32-year-old, who won an Epee team silver at the 2004 Athens Olympics for Germany, says a boycott of Beijing will only serve to harm the careers of those who choose not to travel.
Calls to boycott Beijing have grown in the light of a bloody crackdown in Tibet last week as Chinese authorities surpressed protests marking the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
And last weekend, International Olympic Committee vice-president Thomas Bach said a number of Germany's top athletes were considering boycotting.
A spokesman for the German government on Monday said they oppose a boycott because it would be the athletes who paid the highest price.
And Duplitzer agrees citing the example of the US-led boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
"If we wanted to boycott Beijing, we would cut off our noses to spite our faces," Duplitzer told Frankfurt newspaper FAZ. "In Moscow, the boycott had no effect on the system there. We can only go to China and clench our fists.
"Anyone who doesn't go to Bejing risks four years of preparation being in vain. The Olympics are a giant event and if you don't go, you miss out on exposure in the press and on television, which counts against you.
"I am in the Germany army and the state invest a great deal of money so that I can compete.
"So there is an obligation to fight hard for success and if I take the moral high ground I will only get the short end of the stick."
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