Steven van de Velde will step into a picturesque sand court near the base of the Eiffel Tower on Sunday to meet his long-held ambition of becoming an Olympian.
And to let him represent the Netherlands at the Paris Games, the Dutch Olympic Committee agreed that he should stay outside the athletes’ village and not talk with media, who would certainly ask about his prison sentence for raping a 12-year-old girl when he was 19.
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Van de Velde, 29, has been competing on the volleyball tour and in international competitions for several years, yet his selection to the Dutch Olympic team has prompted backlash and new attention to his troubling past.
The
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