Iraqi rowers get tickets to Beijing

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Iraqi rowers Haidar Nozad and Hamzah Hussein Jebur will be competing in the Beijing Games after all. The two athletes were cleared on Wednesday as part of an agreement between the IOC and Iraqi officials.

“We called the IOC and asked if we could have the rowers back and the answer just came through,” Matt Smith, executive director of the International Rowing Federation, said Wednesday. “We’re very happy.”

The IOC on Tuesday reversed course and allowed Iraq to send two track and field athletes. The IOC, however, said deadlines had passed for the rowing, judo, archery and weightlifting competitions, and that positions on hold for the Iraqis had been assigned to other countries.

Space, though, was found for the Iraqi athletes in the men’s double scull competition. “No one is kicked out,” Smith said.

The Associated Press reports that there is a chance that another Iraqi could end up in Beijing.

The International Weightlifting Federation reportedly has advised Iraq to have a weightlifter on standby in case an athlete from another country drops out.

The Iraqi team was suspended from the Olympics in May after the IOC alleged that the nation’s Olympic committee had been taken over by the government. Last-minute talks on Tuesday in Lausanne, Switzerland, cleared the way for Iraqi athletes to compete.

-- Greg Johnson