(Raj)
We’ve heard comments that next year’s sporting super-event will be marred by China’s terrible human rights situation, possible protests being suppressed in the full glare of the media, pollution crippling numerous athletes, etc.
But haven’t we forgot maybe the biggest problem of all when it comes to the Olympics? Read the following article from the BBC.
The fight against drugs in sport
Kelly Sotherton believes clean athletes will “definitely” lose out to drugs cheats at next year’s Olympics. The British heptathlete told BBC Radio 5 Live Sport that cheats get away with it and likened doping to stealing. She was reacting to a BBC Sport report that revealed the test for human growth hormone (HGH) was almost useless.
The article is littered with examples of cheats getting away with things until it’s all too late. That’s the thing. If people are caught before events, great. But it damages the credibility of the sport if they are able to compete and deny others of medals and places in finals. Some people will slip through the net, but do some countries try enough – do they prefer to turn a blind eye in the hope their athletes will get away with it? Or, indeed, do they encourage it?. We all remember China’s “Golden Flowers“, the female swimmers with bodies akin to those of the East German women’s team thanks to “a special Chinese diet” according to their coaches. Although countries will squeal that they can’t control the actions of coaches, anyone with half a brain would question why phyically scrawny women could ever gain so much muscle mass in such a short period of time – that or they deliberately didn’t ask the question.
Will Beijing be the time when clean athletes just ask “what’s the point” and decide to take drugs themselves? If the IOC and other sporting bodies continue to run events without sufficiently tight doping tests, what’s the point in staying clean? For those that want to win many (if not most) have to give up their jobs. Not winning means less income and having to spend more time working and less time training. That’s not a problem for rich countries who essentially give their sportsmen and women a wage, but even then athletes with potential but have not become top-ranked can lose out. How are poorer nations supposed to cope? In terms of the moral argument, if other athletes are taking drugs you’d only be levelling the playing field, wouldn’t you? There are health risks, but some people are willing to take the chance.
Perhaps the simple answer is that the sports governing bodies need to get tough. Impose harsher rules so that if you’re caught doping, your career is over. No second chances – one strike and you’re out, forever. If you’re innocent you can appeal, but cheats can’t expect to come back after a few years. Or wouldn’t it make a difference? I don’t know, but certainly these days the question on everyone’s lips when it comes to who wins the gold medal is “did he/she take drugs?” That’s really very sad.
1
By HongXing
I feel Olympics is just a business event. Time to earn big money for the TV stations and the big companies. What is the purpose of sports? It is to improve your health, to reduce heart disease, diabetes, etc. But today’s atheletes are training 12 hours a day, and some even start when they are 14 or 15 years old! When my mother watched the girls gymnastics event, she said “what is the meaning of this? This is not sports, this is self-torture”. Today’s atheletes always have shorter lives than regular people, so many runners and swimmers have heart problems, and many die early because of heart attacks. This is sad. Olympics should be banned.
November 19, 2007 @ 1:57 am | Comment
2
By Elijah Minott
In all body events people do need supliment to achieve the best results but that supliment is sappose to be used prior to the event itself. I will garentee that every competetor has a special diet to keep them up and running.
Not one will say “I get up everymoring eat a big breakfast, then a sandwhich during the afternoon, and for dinner I have a huge meal” or even the reverse of that. They all use a supliment of some sort when training.
These Super Humans they like to call it is just young adults “Teens” like you is well trained and fully fit. When I was younger everything was easier and is to be treated no diffrent.
About Self Touture. They need to be ready and you need to work your hardest while it might hurt you in the end there is many things that is worth the sacrifice.
Imagine if your country had the best of the best well rounded people in the world focused in a all angles. Would you not take any pride in being looked upon the world as good.
I know it is all fun and games but they did not start saying to themselves ” running is my life, all I can do is run, I take pride in my abilities to travel faster on two feet, running is all I can do”
may it be Weight lifting, martial arts, swimming, snow boarding, and so forth just to say okay let me take it easy.
Yes I agree the Olympics standards is too high and maybe something else new like the “Ninja Warrior” I keep hearing about.
However locked into peoples minds it is traditional and there is much pride to the best of something that you devoted your entirety to.
Even if there is better people out there then you you can at least said I gave it my all my exsitance my eternity my youth my everything.
Saying I can do this and not even attempting it is the worst case senario but if you attempt it and it might cost you a couple of years then I say that is a victory that may not have any prizes at the end of the tunnel but at least you did it.
Everybody takes pride in something even the most signifigant of actions.
November 19, 2007 @ 4:54 am | Comment
3
By Robin
Maj, please F-off. Do you really have nothing better to do with your time than to come here and try to lure readers to your copy-pasted/slightly-edited-to-hide-the-keywords comments on other people’s blogs? It shows you are the same dangerous and psychotic troll we all knew and loved (like loving a hangnail). Really, just f* off.
Richard
November 19, 2007 @ 5:43 am | Comment
4
By nanheyangrouchuan
Neglecting the debate over activities that may occur outside of the venues, the games will be remembered for the following:
1. Very controversial decisions in favor of Chinese athletes.
2. Chinese athletes will be the only ones not affected by any doping scandals, the US and to a lesser extent Europe will be caught not just using performance enhancers but making them in their dorm rooms and selling them to innocent Chinese bystanders.
3. Disqualifications of leading western athletes who have not been removed for doping scandals (there will be few if any black athletes in the T&F, basketball or boxing events, and few if any Aussie swimmers).
4. Endless gloating about the superiority of Chinese athletes, who were groomed by Chinese society under the caring yet stern gaze of the Chinese gov’t.
November 19, 2007 @ 2:01 pm | Comment
5
By Michael Turton
LOL. nanhey, you crack me up.
Interesting article, Raj, about a huge problem. Also now in high school football steroids and painkillers are huge problems. There doesn’t seem to be an answer, since tests are human, and anything one human can engineer…..
Michael
November 19, 2007 @ 9:18 pm | Comment
6
By Arty
US athletes will not be caugh for use of steroids. It it old fashion. Ever heard of myostatin mono-clonal antibodies. 🙂 Also read the latest JBC, scientists have created a mighty-mouse base on selective expression of a single gene in muscle.
November 20, 2007 @ 1:46 am | Comment
7
By me
Is Vaj now claiming only Chinese cheat? I didn’t expect that at all. Look, even if this blog is for criticism of the CPC it does you no good to try to attack Chinese people for something everyone else does more (read some crime statistics some time)
November 20, 2007 @ 9:34 am | Comment
8
By me
4. Endless gloating about the superiority of Chinese athletes, who were groomed by Chinese society under the caring yet stern gaze of the Chinese gov’t.
5. Nanhe being proven wrong about his retarded predictions.
Has Hong Kong exploded yet?
November 20, 2007 @ 9:36 am | Comment
9
By stuart
“Is Vaj now claiming only Chinese cheat? I didn’t expect that at all. Look, even if this blog is for criticism of the CPC it does you no good to try to attack Chinese people for something everyone else does more”
Raj is claiming no such thing. I suggest that you remove the chip on your shoulder and/or CPC implant before reading his post again.
Attack Chinese people? Please grow up.
November 20, 2007 @ 10:27 am | Comment
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By nanheyangrouchuan
China hasn’t exploded, but it is slowly sinking into filthy, bad mainland quicksand/waste.
November 20, 2007 @ 1:49 pm | Comment
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By Raj
“Is Vaj now claiming only Chinese cheat?”
stuart’s right – you do have a chip on your shoulder. I mentioned a very big case of Chinese doping as an example of how some countries turn a blind eye so they can simple get medals, or at best don’t properly monitor what their sports staff do. Given this is primarily a blog about China, why wouldn’t I have used a Chinese example?
Grow up and stop being so overly sensitive. The cheats in 2008 will come from many different countries rather than just one – anyone who knows anything about international sport knows how widespread drug abuse is.
November 22, 2007 @ 3:04 am | Comment
12
By ecodelta
And the winner of the marathon… cough… cough…
of the 2008 Olympic games in Peking … cough…. cough… is the world famous athlete…. cough… cough…. blasted pollution… cough… cough.. they told they were going to fix it!!… cough…. cough…. 😉
November 22, 2007 @ 5:52 am | Comment
13
By me
it adds to the challenge.
November 22, 2007 @ 3:36 pm | Comment
14
By CK
“did he/she take drugs?” That’s really very sad.
Indeed….
All these factions of quacking canards is poluting the air no worse than harmful airborne particles –
“I feel Olympics is just a business event. Time to earn big money for the TV stations and the big companies. ”
Of course it is, and this is also where it is the job of those concerned in the media to make sure that having some news, fabricated or otherwise, is better than no news at all.
November 23, 2007 @ 8:59 am | Comment