AOC fires back over sanctions against Nick D'Arcy and Kenrick Monk

KENRICK Monk has accepted that he and team-mate Nick D'Arcy will be sent home as soon as they finish competing in next month's London games.

Trickett gun

OLYMPIC swimmer Kenrick Monk has accepted that he and team-mate Nick D'Arcy will be sent home as soon as they finish competing in next month's London games.

Monk fronted a media conference in Brisbane to affirm that their visit to a US gun store was a “bit of fun” that backfired when he posted pictures on Facebook of them brandishing high-powered weapons.
 
After talks with Swimming Australia officials, both said they would stay away from social media in the lead-up to the Olympics.
 
Monk said he accepted the decision by the Australian Olympic Committee to put him on the next plane, along with D’Arcy, after their swimming commitments at the games were completed. This means the bad-boy pair will miss team celebrations and the Olympics closing ceremony.
 
“That’s their decision and I have to live with that,” Monk said. “As soon as the race is over, I will be sent home.”
 
D’Arcy said Twitter and Facebook were “distractions” he could live without in the countdown to the games.
 
He would not be drawn on whether he was disappointed by the AOC’s hard line.
 
Earlier officials hit back at claims of hypocrisy over their decision to sanction the pair.

Team-mate Eamon Sullivan insisted the pair had done anything wrong.

He has questioned what the fuss is all about because in 2007 Swimming Australia took the team to a Canberra rifle range as part of a bonding session.

In a statement, AOC spokesman Mike Tancred said the two matters were unrelated, and Monk and D'Arcy had been sanctioned for "breaching their team agreement as members of the 2012 Australian Olympic Team".

"The Canberra gun range visit was an initiative of Swimming Australia," he said.

"It had nothing to do with the AOC. It was 2007, they were not members of any Olympic Team at that time.

"It has absolutely no bearing on the decision taken by the AOC at the weekend."

D'Arcy and Monk returned to Australia on Friday and quickly apologised for the photos, which appeared on Facebook and Twitter before being pulled down by Swimming Australia.

D'Arcy is a medal hope in the 200m butterfly in London, while Monk is in the 4x200m freestyle relay team.

Given that swimming is one of the first sports on the Games program, the punishment is seen as quite severe as it denies the pair all the fun of living in the Olympic Village during the second week.

But taking into account their histories, no one was overly concerned by the AOC hard line.

D'Arcy was charged with king-hitting swimmer Simon Cowley in 2008 and declared himself bankrupt to avoid paying damages of $370,000. Monk made a false statement to police last year that he had been the victim of a hit-and-run rather than admitting he had broken his elbow by falling off a skateboard.

Yesterday it emerged that during an officially sanctioned training camp in Canberra a couple of years ago, Australian swimmers including Libby Trickett were taken to a gun club as part of a bonding session and were photographed posing with weapons.

Sullivan, a former world 100m freestyle record holder and one of the swimmers taken to the gun club that day, said on the Nine Network's Wide World of Sports yesterday he could not understand why his team-mates should be punished for doing something that was not only sanctioned by swimming officials but organised by them as well.

"We went to a gun range and had a bit of fun, a bit of a bonding session," he said on the program.

"Nothing wrong with it then, so I don't see the difference now."

Indeed, said Sullivan, shooting was an Olympic sport, yet shooters don't get into trouble for posing in their swimmers.

Guns are also a part of a second summer Olympic sport, modern pentathlon, and weapons are also involved in two other sports - archery and fencing.

Physical violence features in a further four -- boxing wrestling, judo and taekwondo.

There's no doubt the AOC is sending a message not just to D'Arcy and Monk but to all Australian Olympians.

The problem is that it's getting a little muddled.

Additional reporting: AAP