Liz Cambage backflips on Olympic boycott threat after team photo controversy

After threatening to boycott the Olympics over a photo furore, Liz Cambage has made a final call on whether she’ll be going to Tokyo.

Liz Cambage is going to Tokyo.

The basketball star confirmed she would be taking part in the Olympics after last week threatening to boycott the Games in protest over Australia’s lack of recognition of athletes of colour in its promotional material.

“For everyone so desperately wondering what my decision is for the Opals, I’m in baby. I’m in baby! I’m in! Wooooo!” she said in a video uploaded to her Instagram story on Tuesday.

“How can I sit out when we have the bodysuits back? I’m going to look so good in it.

“I’m going to play with my sisters that I’ve been playing with since I was a wee little thing and I’m going to ball out for all those young brown kids back in Australia watching me, baby. I’m going to do it for you!”

Cambage said photo-shoots involving select Australian athletes were examples of “whitewashing” and didn’t truly reflect the diversity of the country’s sportsmen and women.

Last week she shared two images to Instagram — one of athletes showing off Australia’s uniform for the Games and another promoting the official underwear sponsor of the team — while launching her attack.

“If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times, HOW AM I MEANT TO REPRESENT A COUNTRY THAT DOESN’T EVEN REPRESENT ME,” Cambage wrote.

Cambage took issue with the athletes selected to represent Australia in promotional shoots.

She wants more recognition of people of colour.

But Cambage is all in on wearing the green and gold to Japan, and said all the hate being thrown her way since she took a stand only made her more motivated to push for change.

“There are two people in this world. There are the people who have the balls to stand up and say something and make change — that’s me. I was born for this,” she said.

“I am such a narcissist, I am such a psycho b***h that all the hate that you give me, I love it … it makes me go harder, it makes me push for more.

“The second type of people in this world — that’s the people that are intimated and scared and insecure and hide behind fake profiles and talk s**t because you’re too scared to do anything.

“I’m out here talking my s**t with my big-a*** mouth, being a big-old b***h, making change, baby.

“Thankyou for all the messages of love and thankyou for all the messages of hate because the hate turns me on and the love lifts me up.

“I’m not going to stop for no one or nothing. Have a great day.”

After taking to social media last week to point out her problems with the Australian Olympic team’s promotional photos, Cambage doubled down in a video.

“Australia, wake the f*** up,” she said. “I’m not playing these games no more, I’m not.

“It’s sad, the whitewashing is sad. Your black athletes lead you everywhere. Indigenous athletes are some of the best athletes we have. An y’all don’t use them at all.”

On the weekend Cambage went further by dragging a former coach and past players into the furore, claiming to have received threats.

Australian basketball legend Lauren Jackson supported her former teammate’s right to express her opinion and earlier this week was hopeful Cambage would join the rest of the Opals on the flight to Tokyo.

“Liz is one of the finest players that we’ve ever had representing us,” Jackson told NCA Newswire on Monday. “She has been a core part of the Opals for the past decade, and it would be fitting to see her on the dais in Tokyo.

“I really hope that she is a part of that group — she is very important to the team.

“The AOC have responded and are looking at constitutional change and from my perspective I support the right of any person to express their opinions in a constructive and respectful manner.”

Liz Cambage is going to Japan.

However, not everyone was supportive of Cambage’s protest, as Aussie tennis legend Todd Woodbridge took umbrage with her approach.

“My initial thought was, don’t do it that way,” Woodbridge said on Sports Sunday. “Why do it that way? Why do it with the anger and the threats? You cannot threaten to pull out of representing your country, you’ve got the privilege to be there and to do something special.

“If you want to do something like that, why don’t you do it the way Naomi Osaka did it? I mean, she changed the world. She didn’t have to get out there and use language and threaten us all that we’ve done the wrong thing.

“I’d say, good on you for standing up for it but there are ways.

“I just believe there was a bit of disrespect for the athletes in the photo, who rightfully deserved to be in that photo.”

Originally published as Liz Cambage backflips on Olympic boycott threat after team photo controversy