Since they are part of the US? I assume the US is OK with them having their own team?
They’re a US territory and a commonwealth. The US Virgin Islands also have an Olympic team, as does Guam, and I would imagine that the Philippines did when they had the same status.
Puerto Rico and a number of other associated states/territories send separate teams from the parent country to the Olympics and many other sporting competitions, including American Samoa, Aruba, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, and Palestine.
Go, Sand Crabs! (sorry)
When a country (broadly speaking) has more than one Olympic team, are there rules as to who can play for which team? E.g. can a Puerto Rican athlete, who is of course a US Citizen by birth, play for Team USA or is he restricted to the Puerto Rican team? Could a German-American from North Dakota just up and apply for the Puerto Rican team or would he have to undergo some sort of “Puertoricanization” process before becoming eligible?
Had to check my calendar. This question usually pops up right at Olympics time.
Remember that:
(a) the Olympic Committees and [Name Sport Here] Federations are supposed to be *legally *private NPOs, not agencies of the governments. Pause for giggling.
(b) when the Modern Olympics came into being, a whole damn lot of the world were not sovereign nations as we now understand them.
© So if a sports club from some colony or protectorate was able to organize and afford a delegation, and maybe “help with some expenses”, they could be allowed in. India, the Phillippines, and Bermuda had pre-WW2 committees.
BTW, outside of the Olympics, in Association Football or Rugby you have the situation that England and Scotland are separate national teams, while there is one “Great Britain” for IOC purposes. OTOH you have the case of France where the “Overseas Collectivities” are considered still part of the Republic and don’t get their own teams.
robert_columbia: You have to choose one “Olympic citizenship” or another, preferrably at the time you first seriously try out for recognized competition; elegibility for this is determined between the particular sport’s orgainizing international and local federations and the Olympic Committees of the sports countries. So for this case there would be overlapping requirements and rules from IOC, USOC, PUROC, the international Federation of the relevant sport, and each of the US and PR sport federation, and for some sports it can be harder to go from one direction to the other. And if you have already competed in IOC-recognized events under one flag, the process for “naturalizing” yourself to another “sports nationality” can be a bloody pain, most often caused by the committee that “loses” the player.
In the particular USA/PUR case, you may gain elegibility to play for Team PUR if you are Puerto Rican (duh) by either birth ***or **ethnicity(), or if you are otherwise another flavor of native or naturalized US citizen, and you establish an ongoing relation with a Puerto Rican Sports Federation competing under its sponsorship, preferrably developing your athletic career in association with that Federation (e.g. one of our silver medalists in wrestling from the last Olympics is a guy who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a child, and developed through High School and Amateur Club teams in San Juan). Conversely, if you are a Puerto Rican native (thus US citizen) but say your sports career is mostly US-associated e.g. you moved to NYC as a teen, boxed Golden Gloves and in the US Army Boxing Team; or your swimming training and competition career happened in US High School and Collegiate teams, you may be eligible to try out for Team USA.
(*) For years, Team PUR basketball squad’s starters were more often than not an English-speaking outfit, made up of “NewYoRicans”, sons and grandsons of folks who had moved Stateside and who had played collegiate or (pre-1992) amateur-club ball there and during the US off-season played in Puerto Rico’s Superior Leage (which pre-1992 was an “Amateur Club” league – yeah, right) .
Tennis player Gigi Fernández, clearly Puerto Rican born and raised and who played collegiate in the USA, competed internationally under Team PUR colors from the late 70s to the mid 80s then had no trouble “emigrating” to Team USA in the late 80s through the 90s, but PUROC tries to not talk about that and often seems like they would want to MemoryHole her altogether.
Similarly, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all participated in the Olympics in the early part of the 20th century, although they were not sovereign states.
What about the Washington, DC, Olympic team then? Or maybe the Olympic Team of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa?
Australia became a sovereign state on federation in 1901.
I’m pretty sure Canada did even earlier and NZ and SA around the same time.
No. Best measure of their lack of sovereignty was that when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were all automatically at war. It wasn’t until the Balfour Declaration of 1926 that Britain recognised that the Dominions were equal to Britain, and not until 1931 that the British Parliament formally recognised it, in the Statute of Westminster.
Indeed, the Iroquois Nationals are recognized as a national lacrosse team by the ILC and compete internationally independent of Canada and the US.
…and yet Australia dates its birth as a sovereign nation to 1901. Go argue with historians all you like, as far as actual reality is concerned, notwithstanding a few isolated instances of the UK asserting some degree of control, Australia stopped being a group of UK colonies and became sovereign in 1901. Which is certainly good enough for the IOC, even if you personally happen to believe that Australia was still really a collection of UK colonies until the 1930s. Or whatever it is you’re claiming.
Well, out of curiosity, I took at look at the wiki on Australia, the Federation of the Colonies (the event you’re alluding to in 1901), and the definition of Dominion of the British Empire, and it looks like Northern’s got it right. FWIW, here in Canada we date the founding of the nation to 1867, even though we, like Australia, weren’t fully sovereign until the Statute of Westminster.
You’re going to win very few disputes with Northern on topics like this! 
Damn! Guess I was thinking of civil service workers (we used to call them sand crabs in the military).
Shakester, I don’t want to hijack this thread, so if you wish to continue, feel free to open another thread about the Dominions if you wish.
BTW, one minor (to me, major to many people who obviously must have already squared away in their minds all the political, social and economic matters involved ) point of the debate about the plausibility of full statehood (or at least “incorporation”) of Puerto Rico is whether it would be mandatory that PUROC be absorbed by USOC under the US Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, or whether IOC could pull a Hong Kong to let PUROC keep separate standing for at least a defined period; or if now because it involves USA other countries would complain, and we’d end up ruining it for the other nonsovereigns.