Somewhere in Tuscaloosa, Ala., a senior on the Alabama women’s golf team is waking up and finding out that the Chinese government had her on a watchlist for potential troublemakers during the Olympics, according to USA Today.
Which is especially confusing because golf isn’t an Olympic sport. And because Lexus Nexus and Internet searches turn up no evidence that she ever went to Beijing.
The athlete in question is Laura Goodwin — that’s her, at right — and she’s from Birmingham, Ala. Her official Alabama bio makes no mention of a trip to the Olympics. A search of Sports Reference’s Olympics page shows that no athletes with the last name Goodwin participated in the 2008 games, so she wasn’t there to support a family member (or at least one with the same last name). Unless she was supporting a Tide alumnus in Beijing, I’d guess that the Chinese government just made a clerical error when placing Goodwin’s name on their list. The fact that no one over there speaks English probably had something to do with it.
I’d also like to point out the closing line from the initial USA Today article: “Calls to the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday went unanswered.” I feel your pain.