As head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, Uday oversaw the imprisonment and torture of Iraqi athletes who were deemed not to have performed to expectations. According to widespread reports, torturers beat and caned the soles of the football players' feet—inflicting intense pain without leaving visible marks on the rest of their bodies. Uday reportedly kept scorecards with written instructions on how many times each player should be beaten after a poor showing. He would insult athletes who performed below his expectations by calling them dogs and monkeys—considered insults in the Arab world—to their faces.[9] One defector reported that jailed football players were forced to kick a concrete ball after failing to reach the 1994 FIFA World Cup finals.[10] The Iraqi national football team were seen with their heads shaved after failing to achieve a good result in a tournament in the 1980s. It was widely circulated that Uday ordered the shaving as part of the punishment. Another defector claimed that athletes were dragged through a gravel pit and subsequently immersed in a sewage tank to induce infection in the victims' wounds.[11] After Iraq lost, 4–1, to Japan in the quarter finals of the 2000 AFC Asian Cup in Lebanon, goalkeeper Hashim Hassan, defender Abdul Jaber and forward Qahtan Chatir were labelled as guilty of loss and eventually flogged for three days by Uday's security
