Weekly Report - 09 August 2012 (WR-12-31)

Venezuela’s épée fencer Rubén Limardo won the country’s first gold medal in any discipline at the Olympic Games in London last week and only its second ever gold medal - the first was for boxing in the 1968 Games in Mexico City. A sign, if one were needed, of the political polarisation in Venezuela was the manner in which the government sought to claim Limardo as a patriotic son of the Bolivarian Revolution and the opposition accused the government of having abandoned him - by cutting his funding - like the rest of the nation while blindly pursuing a failed political project. With presidential elections on the horizon in October it was scarcely surprising that both sides were keen to harness the feel good factor generated by Limardo’s triumph.

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