What’s the best way to help our only Olympic gymnast train for the games next year? Yep, you didn’t guess it – make him take three 18-hour flights to China.
Gymnastics Ireland have admitted responsibility for a blunder which saw 22-year-old Irish gymnast Kieran Behan turned away from the China upon arrival.
Kieran, who’s only the second Irish gymnast to qualify for the Olympics, was forced to make the trip to China twice because of a visa error.
The mistake was the fault of Gymnastics Ireland who said it accepts full responsibility for the ‘serious administrative error’.
Both Kieran and his trainer Demetrios Bradshaw were turned away by border guards in Beijing on Saturday and forced to return to Heathrow airport.
One of Kieran’s team had a massive overreaction to the whole thing, telling the Irish Independent: “Whoever was responsible for booking the tickets and visas in Dublin made a monumental error. It was the world’s biggest cock-up”.
After returning to London, Surrey-based Kieran was able to sort the mess out with the Chinese embassy and has since flown back to China.
The whole debacle cost Gymnastics Ireland thousands of euro from what can only be assumed to be a pretty small budget.
Ciaran Gallagher, CEO of Gymnastics Ireland said: “We fully acknowledge that the error should never have happened and we will be carrying out a full investigation both to establish the facts and to ensure nothing like this can happen again”.
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