Argentine Olympic Committee Slams Ad That Sparked Row With Britain
Argentina’s Olympic Committee is distancing itself from a television ad that has sparked a dispute with Britain ahead of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.
Britain demanded an apology from Argentina over the controversial 90-second ad, aired on Argentine television last week, showing an athlete training in the Falkland Islands, the British territory in the south Atlantic to which Buenos Aires lays claim.
Set to stirring music, the ad shows Argentine field hockey captain Fernando Zylberberg training for the games by running through the islands’ capital of Stanley, passing by British symbols such as a red telephone booth. When Zylberberg reaches the memorial to British sailors who died in the war, he is seen doing step-ups on it.
The ad concludes with the provocative slogan, “To compete on English soil, we train on Argentine soil.”
“Desecrating a war memorial, using it as a cheap prop in a very tawdry little advert, I think that just says so much about the way that [Argentine President Cristina] Fernández de Kirchner is conducting her business,” Falklands War veteran Simon Weston told ITN.