"
Then came the shocking reply: "He is not chicken-hearted. He was in fact the 66kg world judo champion in 2001 and 2003. He opted out of the match on learning that he was to fight an Israeli. He is Arash Miresmaeili, an Iranian."
Then the jigsaw fell into place. Iran has refused to recognise Israel's right to exist since Islamic fundamentalists toppled the Shah in 1979.
Miresmaeili's has triggered a fresh crisis at the Olympic Games where race, creed and colour are barred from interfering in sports.
The International Judo Federation (IJF) failed to agree on how to deal with the politically explosive issue at an emergency meeting and said it would hold further talks today.
The burning issue was whether any penalty would hit Miresmaeili alone or the entire Iranian team, as the intrusion of the Middle East's bitter politics threatened to fly in the face of the Olympics ideal.
"There has been no decision and we are considering this situation very carefully," said IJF spokesman Michel Brousse.
"This has not been brought to us as an issue and until it is, we would not have any comment," said a spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which pledges to uphold the ideal of sport transcending national barriers.
The official reason at the Games for Miresmaeili's non-appearance was failure to make the weight but judo chiefs questioned how a seasoned athlete, who carried Iran's flag at Friday's opening ceremony, would have made such a basic error.
But in Tehran, the Iranian National Olympic Committee said in a statement: "This is a general policy of our country to refrain from competing against athletes of the Zionist regime and Arash Miresmaeili has observed this policy."
Miresmaeili was quoted by Iran's official news agency IRNA as saying that he acted in solidarity with the Palestinians.
"Although I have trained for months and am in shape, I refused to face my Israeli rival in sympathy with the oppressed Palestinian people," Miresmaeili said, adding: "I am not upset about the decision I have made."
In a fresh doping case, Slovak shot putter Milan Haborak tested positive for a banned substance and left the Olympics, the Slovak news agency SITA reported.
"I really am sorry because I was really looking forward to competing. I trained long and hard. But I do not know that I took something that is banned," SITA quoted Haborak as saying.
Team spokesman Anton Zerer refused to comment on the report.
The Games were rocked last Thursday when Greece's top two athletes, Olympic 200 metres champion Costas Kenteris and 100 metres silver medallist Katerina Thanou, missed a dope test.
They were dropped from the host nation's team Saturday pending an IOC disciplinary hearing today.
On the second day of full competition at the Olympics, Athens was blasted by a hot, hair-dryer wind that threatened to spook the horses at the equestrian events and may have blown some arrows off course at the archery.
The rowing regatta had to be stopped, prompting some told-you-so comments from critics who said it was in the wrong place to begin with.
But the gusting winds could not stop Russia's Alexei Alipov winning gold in the men's trap shooting with a near-flawless performance on a range carved into a mountain top.
The 29-year-old from Moscow scored 149 out of a possible 150, including a perfect 25 in the final round.
Swimming again grabbed most attention as Australia's Ian Thorpe won round one of a duel with American Michael Phelps, qualifying fastest for the 200 metres freestyle.
Thorpe showed no signs of fatigue from his titanic struggle with Grant Hackett in Saturday's 400 freestyle final victory as he cruised through his heat in one minute 47.22 seconds.
The archery contest returned the Olympics to their birthplace in Athens's Panathinaiko Stadium, 108 years after the first Games were held at the classical marble amphitheatre.
Attendance at the first Summer Olympics since the September 11 attacks on the United States, three years ago, has disappointed in the first two days, but organisers hope it will soon pick up.
Athens has spent 1 billion euros ($1.23 billion) on security, four times more than Sydney in 2000, and security personnel outnumber athletes seven to one.
So organisers were swift to play down a British newspaper's charge that security at the Games was a "terrorist's dream."
