Thursday, July 21, 2016

50 years past time

...but give the IOC credit; they appear to be finally laying down the law on performance enhancing drugs and the nations that use them to improve their standing in the Olympics; Russia's track and field team is banned from Rio. 

Well, at least a golf clap for them; the great reason, of course, that the Olympics have been a bastion for hyper-nationalist nonsense for a long, long time is that Olympic qualification is not a matter of being one of the best in the world, but rather being the best in your country.  Not surprisingly, countries used and manipulated the rules for their own purposes, and thus the floodgates were opened to enormous amounts of time, effort, and money to "win the medal count." 

Hang those incentives in front of nations and athletes, and we ought not be surprised that so many cheat.  Maybe, just maybe, the IOC needs to re-read de Coubertin's thoughts on the matter and change some things.

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