Friday 29th of March 2024

the sad politics of an unfair despicable olympic organisation

 

olimpriks

The Olympics are now the summit of political games, sponsorship favourism, secrecy and drugs, including those that WADA is not looking for. It is a compliment to the Australian team to manage to swim in these murky waters without spitting turds... except one winner taunted a Chinese as a former drug cheat. Not on mate. Sledging is a cricket sport appendage...

 

The interview below from Democracy Now! inspired Gus' deflated/over inflated Olympic logo above. You can hear Democracy Now! on Radio Skidrow 88.9 FM in Sydney and other location and online. 

 

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Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation magazine, says protests highlighting racial and economic injustice are expected from athletes attending the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, such as tennis champion Serena Williams and players from the NBAWNBA and other countries. Polls show more than 60 percent of Brazilians think hosting the Games will hurt their country. He says that ahead of today’s opening ceremony, residents of heavily policed and displaced neighborhoods plan a major march to Rio’s "Olympic City."

TRANSCRIPTThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to the American tennis star Serena Williams, who just arrived in Rio and was asked about the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

SERENA WILLIAMS: I am—I don’t involve myself in politics. I think it’s really important for me to really pass the message of love and unity across all nations. Doesn’t matter what race. Obviously, with me being African-American, I’m very sensitive over a lot of things. But I think it’s important that, you know, we should pass a message of love as opposed to hate.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, talk about the significance of Serena Williams speaking out.

DAVE ZIRIN: I mean, I think for her to say, "I don’t talk about politics, but I believe in love over hate," I mean, that just says something about these elections, that to say I’m for love over hate is actually a political message. Like, what in previous election cycles might sound like a Hallmark card, tragically, is, in 2016, a cry of resistance, because Donald Trump actually does represent that kind of organized hate.

And Serena Williams, also, she makes that statement with a kind of—with a background, if you will, with a legacy that she’s built over the last couple of years of being someone who has strongly spoken out against the extrajudicial killings of young black men and women, and someone who has linked her career to raising funds for the Equal Justice Initiative, which is a tremendous organization that does work in terms of fighting the new Jim Crow and mass incarceration. So, everything that Serena Williams says, I think, is just fraught with meaning. And it really—seriously, it doesn’t take an advanced American studies degree from a university to read between the lines in terms of what she’s saying there.

But if people want more explicit political talk at these Olympics, please keep a close eye at Ibtihaj Muhammad. She is a U.S. fencer, and she is the first U.S. athlete to ever compete wearing a hijab. And she has already been explicit in her condemnation of Donald Trump, and so proud of the fact that she is a Muslim representing the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and come back to this discussion. We’re talking to Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation magazine. He’s headed to Rio, and we’re going to be talking to him there, but getting a preview as the Rio Olympics are about to begin. His latest book—"The Last Dance: On Heading to Olympic Rio," his latest piece. His book,Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "Funeral do Lavrador," "Funeral of a Worker," by Zélia Barbosa. This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we talk to Dave Zirin about the opening of the Olympics.

Talk about other athletes you’re following, but start off by talking about what’s happening with Russia right now. How many Russian athletes have been banned? Is it something like 118?

DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And each federation now gets to judge which Russian athletes get to compete and which Russian athletes don’t get to compete. And this is so interesting, because it’s very difficult to separate what’s happening right now with Russia in the Olympics with a lot of the anti-Putin, anti-Russia hysteria that’s become so linked with Donald Trump in these elections. I mean, you look at the coverage, and if you look at the pressure that was put on the International Olympic Committee by the West to ban Russia wholesale and just not even have their flag fly at the Olympic Games—and it is because there is credible evidence that Russia ran an entire state-run doping operation.

But the problem of what this has exposed is that the International Olympic Committee is an utterly untransparent cartel. I mean, it is a 19th century organization in a WikiLeaks world. And that’s just not going to be acceptable going forward. So they have produced this report where Russia has no rights to appeal, no rights to even look at the evidence that’s been presented, and it’s presented as fiat for the judgment of Thomas Bach, the head of the International Olympic Committee. And what Bach has said is, he’s delivered an opinion that’s the equivalent of "It tastes like chicken," like it doesn’t really satisfy anybody, because what it’s done is it’s effectively put a scarlet S on the chests of all Russian athletes, and, at the end, it’s banned all of the Russian officials from even coming to the Olympics, but at the same time, it didn’t—he didn’t do the kind of wholesale ban, the wholesale nationwide condemnation, because he said that collective punishment is against the Olympic ethos.

And so, now we have situations where, in some events, there will be Russian participation, like in swimming; in other events, like the entire Paralympics, there will be no Russian participation. And it’s been left up, really, to the political intricacies of every individual federation themselves as they govern their sport. And, by the way, they’re trying to figure all of this out in real time, as I’m talking to you, Amy. Like these decisions haven’t been made yet, and the Olympics are already officially underway. So it is a mess, and it’s exposing that the IOC has no consistent policy on performance-enhancing drugs, no way to control them and no way to really resist the kinds of broader geopolitical pressures that are put on the Olympic movement.

AMY GOODMAN: So, there are 118 Russian athletes banned, but there are over, what, 400 Russian athletes, so most will be in the Olympics.

DAVE ZIRIN: Right, but there’s no real way of understanding how many of the ones that are competing might be competing clean or how many of the ones banned might actually have been clean, as well. And that’s part of the problem, is that each of these federations are governed by their own politics, their own infighting, and it creates a situation where nobody really knows what the results are going to be. And so, this isn’t just about like we’re seeing how the sausage is made. I mean, this is about, I mean, actually being inside the sausage factory and being so repulsed, that the sausage itself becomes irrelevant.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Venus and Serena Williams—Serena, who has spoken out against Donald Trump—are in Rio to play tennis. Explain.

DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah. I mean, they’re part of the Olympic team. I mean, this is part of what they’re there to do. And unlike some of the athletes who are concerned about issues like Zika—and I think that they’re not going to be the only athletes who have something to say about Trump when they’re down there. I think that we, I think, can expect this to be one of the more political Olympics that we’ve seen since 1968. I already know of athletes who plan on making political stands while they’re down there, whether those stands are connected to Black Lives Matter and police, or whether those stances are directly related to the U.S. elections and a feeling like they have a moral obligation to stand up to Donald Trump. Those are the general things I’m hearing.

And I think that’s going to be a very interesting challenge for the International Olympic Committee, because they have rules against athletes speaking out politically. And they say there is no politics that belongs on the Olympic field. Of course, they allow sponsors that are incredibly political, like Bechtel and whatnot, like companies that have incredibly politicized agendas. And, of course, the Olympics themselves are a deeply politicized spectacle of nationalism and whatnot, and, of course, the mere fact that there’s going to be something like 45 heads of states at the opening ceremonies. I mean, this is a political operation in so many respects. The only people who aren’t allowed to be political are the athletes, other than wearing their sponsors’ brands.

And it’s going to—and I think this is the year, though, where we’re going to see that crack. There were suspicions that it would crack around Sochi around LGBT rights, but it really didn’t, except for a couple of quick things. I think this is going to be the one where athletes are going to be more outspoken, and they’re going to feel a need to say something, whether that something is about the situation in Brazil itself or whether it’s U.S. athletes or athletes in Western Europe saying something for the rights of migrants.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, do you—can you give us a preview, what you’ve heard, who might be speaking out, who has spoken out in a big way before going?

DAVE ZIRIN: Well, yeah. I mean, first of all, you’ve got the whole basketball teams from the United States. I mean, the women’s basketball team has several players on it who were making political stands in the WNBA, standing for Black Lives Matter. Now they’re bringing all of that to Rio, to an international stage. They stood up to their own league, the WNBA, who tried to fine them. They resisted those fines and said, "No, we dare you to fine us and keep fining us." And they had—they turned it into a big public spectacle. And the WNBA—

AMY GOODMAN: And explain why they were being fined.

DAVE ZIRIN: They were being fined because they were wearing shirts in pre-game that said "Black Lives Matter," that said the names Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, but also said "Dallas 5" for the five police officers killed in Dallas. And the WNBA said, "If you keep wearing those shirts, we will fine you." And the fines actually—they really bit, becauseWNBA players do not make a lot of money. Average salary is about 50 grand a year. And so, they said, "No, we’re going to keep wearing them, and we refuse to talk to the media about anything except Black Lives Matter issues," which was really powerful. So they weren’t cooperating with the media afterwards, except to talk about these politics. And theWNBA rescinded. They blinked. They backed off. And it’s going to be very interesting to see if they bring that to Rio.

Now, one player in the NBA expressed his explicit solidarity with the WNBA players, and that is Carmelo Anthony. And Carmelo Anthony is on the men’s U.S.A. basketball team. And he is the elder statesman and de facto leader of that team, and he is down there in Rio, as well. It would not surprise me at all if Carmelo Anthony had something to say.

And then there are the lesser-known athletes. A name for folks to think about is a guy named Laurence Halsted, who’s a fencer for Great Britain. I mean, he is somebody who—he has a Twitter feed, Olympians’ Voice. And he has been actively trying to fight and resist the idea that Olympians have no right to speak out. And he plans to test the elasticity, or lack thereof, of the bonds that keep Olympic athletes from speaking out.

And then, of course, there’s the specter of the fact that the Olympics are actually sponsoring an all-refugee team this year. And these are world-class athletes who come from Syria and South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And they are going to be competing in Olympic events. And they’re going to be arriving not under any national flag, but under the Olympic flag. And the whole point of it is to raise consciousness and humanity about refugee issues. But the—and this is kind of like the IOCis using this as a form of public relations, like "Look how great the Olympics is: We even support the refugee crisis that’s happening globally." And yet, that could easily spiral to somewhere politically that they don’t want it to go, particularly if the refugees have criticisms of some of the countries that expelled them or did not play a role in helping them or their families. And—and this is the trickiest part, is—what about the internally displaced people or internal refugees inside Rio, the 77,000 people who were displaced in the eight years to make way for the Olympic Games? That will be very difficult, if Thomas Bach or anyone in the IOC is asked, "Gee, so you have this refugee team, but what about all the homeless people in Rio?"

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s go to Rio. In May, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, unveiled a new terminal at Rio’s international airport. It’s expected to receive one-and-a-half million passengers during the Olympics, cost an estimated $500 million. Speaking at a news conference, he stressed the importance of the legacy following the game.

MAYOR EDUARDO PAES: [translated] The Olympics is an event which lasts 17 or 18 days, with a more intense impact over one or two months. The real reason for bringing the Olympics to a country or a city is what we can leave that country or city afterwards—a physical, tangible and objective legacy. I think it is becoming increasingly clear the amount of things that have been done because of Olympic inspiration, which are not necessarily for the Olympics.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about that, Dave, and Mayor Eduardo Paes’s comments.

DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, I interviewed Eduardo Paes face to face for about 45 minutes in May. And let’s just put it like this: I was interviewing him in a nonsmoking government building, and the man’s ashtrays were overflowing. I mean, because—partly because of the crisis that’s taken place in Brasília with Dilma and the impeachment and the fact that her replacement, Michel Temer, is such a train wreck, Eduardo Paes is basically the political face of these Olympics. He’s also bilingual. He has huge aspirations to become the president of the country. And the Olympics coming off without a hitch is a huge part of it. And what you just heard him doing, Amy, is him spinning the fact that so many of the Olympic legacy promises that were made when Brazil was enjoying 9 percent annual growth rates are not going to come to pass. They’re just not. And so, now it’s "Hey, you know, what about things inspired by the Olympics?" Like, you know—and it’s a way of trying to say that we’ll be ready, we’ll figure it out, and if it’s not great, just remember that we did our best. And I think—

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation magazine. His recent article, "The Last Dance: On Heading to Olympic Rio." He’s also the author of Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy. Dave, you mentioned displacement, the displacement of people in the area. There’s a few figures that are interesting. Nearly two-thirds of Brazilians, 63 percent, think hosting the Olympics will hurt Brazil. According to a recent study, only 16 percent said they’re enthusiastic about the Games; 51 percent, they said they have no interest in the Games. But talk about the turmoil in the area, the people we won’t see interviewed when the networks are down there.

DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah. I mean, the people who won’t be interviewed are going to be protesting today. There’s a large protest planned in Rio for today. And these are the people who have been displaced. These are the people who have been the victims of police violence. And these are the people who the Olympic monolith has basically landed on top of over the last eight years. And these are also the folks who feel lied to, because when the Olympics came in, they were brought in with a promise that they would be used as a tool to tackle inequality inside of Rio, and the opposite has taken place. As one councilman said to me, Rio is now a more unequal place than it was before the Olympics came. Now, some of that is due to the economic crisis, but people, I think, have to understand that the Olympics do not exist on a parallel realm to the economic crisis in Rio. They have been an aggravator of that very crisis, because they’ve taken out infrastructure funds at a moment when people need them desperately, particularly around issues of health and education.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave, I want to thank you for being with us, and look forward to talking to you in Rio. Dave Zirin is sports editor for The Nation magazine. His recent article is called "The Last Dance: On Heading to Olympic Rio." Author of Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, the Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy. He’s host of Edge of Sports.....

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/5/dave_zirin_protests_by_athletes_and

 

not in the olympic spirit...

 

Mack Horton has become the target of online trolls just hours after taking the gold medal in the men's 400 metres freestyle final over comments he made calling Chinese runner up Sun Yang out as a "drug cheat".

Horton delivered Australia its first gold medal of the Games, swimming his race to perfection to out-touch the defending Olympic champion.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-07/rio-2016-mack-horton-trolled-calls-out-sun-yang-drug-cheat/7698746?section=olympics-2016

 

Gus: The banning of the entire para-Olympic Russian team is more sadistic than pulling wings off flies. This Olympic organisation should not be allowed to do such political stunt ON BEHALF OF THE USA. The McLaren report is a biased report based on the testimony of one Russian lab personnel and a disgruntled Russian athlete with her husband who "talked" for cash. More than 2/3 of Russian regular athletes have been found to be clean.

 

 

Russian athletes have been banned from competing at the Rio 2016 Paralympics following the country's doping scandal.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) had opened suspension proceedings following the McLaren report, and has now confirmed the ban.

That report, published last month, detailed a state-sponsored doping programme operated by Russia.

The Russian Paralympic Committee is to appeal against the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

In contrast to the IPC, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose not to hand Russia a blanket ban from the Olympic Games.

read more: http://www.bbc.com/sport/disability-sport/37002582

 

 

drug cheats since birth...

 

Since they are born, and even before, kids in the US are under the spell of a cocktail of substances, including added prebiotics, high vitamin content, "essential minerals" and Omega-3 DHA in their artificial baby milk. Mother's milk is often deemed insufficient. Mother has already been under a cocktail of various drugs and vitamin cocktails, including pain killers and some steroids.


Soon baby will go under the next level of drugs: Caffeine, sugar and CO2 in the fizzy drinks. We all know the brands. Food will be laced with sugar, more added vitamins and some "preservatives". Kids will be fed high calorie content food plus massive amount of proteins, including special protein extract designed to build muscles and calcium to strengthen and build bones in a hurry. Add antibiotics and probiotics to this mix. The kids who can afford (or are selected to) the next level of drugs and exercise will go on to become athletes. The others will become fat. 
Competition tends to make kids anxious. Thus the next level of food, include mild steroid to control asthma, anti-drepressant (often used off-label) and possibly HGH (human growth hormones) should the kid not respond to all the other cocktail of drugs, including drugs used to treat legit diseases, but here used to boost performance in otherwise healthy people. The combo of drugs will spread from Prednisome (a catabolic steroid) and anabolic steroid. This of course has been legally prescribed by specialists. The anabolic steroids will help build muscles. Extra protein and exercise will help maintain the muscle mass, while Prednistone will help muscle function dramatically under stress by breaking down some muscle tissue into sugars — thus providing a boost of energy. In order to prevent possible inflammation in this process, immunosupressants such as Albuterol can be used. Creatine is added to the mix to phosphatise the muscles for having more springiness and energy containment.
By age 12, the kids who have not had the luxury of exercise and specific diet supplement end up fat kids for all the rest of their life as they carry the habit of storing sugars that turn into lipids for lack of usage. We need our couch potatoes to watch the other kids perform sport interspaced with advert from more sugary food, on tele. And they keep piling on the sugar through more sugary buns and sugary drinks. From then on it's Obesity versus the Olympics. As well many young male will carry on the use of anabolic steroids. Females will use a different muscle building steroid.
Before entering championships, young athletes have been under a regimen of legal drugs which are often supplemented for a couple of years by more potent drugs the effect of which is the consolidation of the general athletic body. Steroids usage is rampant in the US, but in order to avoid detection, usage is stopped before championships, while the other "fixing" drugs maintain performance till the need of a reboot of steroids after the championships. 
The kids who have been selected will be "specialised" according to height, mass and flexibility. Here we enter the world of gymnastic, swimming, track and field and team sports intense training, Brain food, training and vitamins are managed with antidepressants, anti ADHD drugs and painkillers. By age 16, the drug cocktail since before birth has created a super superb athlete. No drugs of course can be detected since many of these are not tested for. 
Winning is the name of the game. 

Gus Leonisky
Your local drug investigator...

More could be said here. The use of drugs in the management of "health" for sporting kids is quite amazing, especially in the US.

see also: http://taylorhooton.org/new-poll-young-people-using-steroids-and-hgh-reaching-epidemic-status/

 

no russian flag...

The Italian believes that the judgment was politically motivated and cannot understand how the decision can be seen as “fair and just.”

“I personally have heard the president of the IPC [Sir Philip Craven] saying that ‘the only goal of their suspension was to not see any Russian flag hanging at the Rio Paralympics’.

“For me this is not a legal argument. It is clear that behind all this, politics is going on. And it seems to be politics against Russia”

Dr Valloni continued by saying that the IPC’s decision to suspend Russian athletes from the upcoming Paralympic games has no legal basis and is “against human rights.”

read more: https://www.rt.com/sport/358078-lucien-valloni-russian-paralympics-ban/

must be the russians again...

But the star of the team is Galen Rupp, the boy that Coach Salazar discovered on the soccer field many years ago. Rupp is the athlete who is pursuing the dream; his mission is bringing marathon gold back to the U.S. for his trainer, for Nike and for his country. In Rio he won the bronze. And in three years, at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, he will be 34-years -old, the best age for distance runners.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a bit, as has now become apparent. One week ago, a secret report from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) appeared containing explosive information about the runners from Oregon. USADA is one of the most effective agencies in the world in the global fight against doping and it has caught a number of high-profile cheats like cycling star Lance Armstrong and Olympic champion sprinter Marion Jones.

'Risky and Untested Procedures'

In summer 2015, former NOP members spoke for the first time about the dubious practices employed by the Nike team and USADA agents launched an investigation. They confiscated emails and medical reports in addition to interviewing more than 40 athletes, coaches and practitioners of sports medicine before summarizing their findings in a report. USADA wrote the report for the Texas Medical Board because one of the NOP doctors runs a practice in Houston.

The cover of the 269-page document is marked "PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL" and it includes reports of injections, transfusions and experiments with drugs. The authors write of "risky and untested" procedures designed to "increase the testosterone and energy levels" of the NOP athletes, putting them "in jeopardy of losing their athletic eligibility." It amounts to an accusation of systematic doping -- and it casts a murky shadow over the American dream of winning the Olympic marathon. 

SPIEGEL obtained the report from the Fancy Bears hacker group along with hundreds of emails, PDF files and Word documents from the USADA investigation. Taken together, the information lays bare the extent of the cheating.

Just over two years ago, it was revealed that Russia had established a clever doping system to boost the performances of the country's athletes. The case in Oregon now shows that injections, pills and manipulations are apparently present in other parts of the world as well. And that it isn't just athletes, coaches and doctors who take part, but apparently sponsors as well.

'Extreme Athletic Excess'

Nike's headquarters in Beaverton are like a small city. There are white, bright office buildings dotted among parks, a lake and athletic facilities. The Nike campus also includes the red track where the NOP athletes do their interval training. Alberto Salazar can often be found standing at the edge of the track with a baseball cap on his head and a stopwatch in his hand. Salazar, 58, is a sports legend in the U.S., having won the New York Marathon three years in a row in the 1980s. 

But his most famous race was his Boston Marathon victory in 1982. The race took place in blazing heat and Salazar drank only two cups of water during the contest. By the time he reached the finish line, he was completely dehydrated and paramedics had to pump six liters (1.6 gallons) of liquids into his body following the race. Later, U.S. President Ronald Reagan invited him to the White House.

 

read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/is-nike-covering-up-dubious-pr...

the sick olympics...

A senior member of the International Olympic Committee says that if it proves too dangerous to hold the Olympics in Tokyo this summer because of the coronavirus outbreak, organisers are more likely to cancel it altogether than to postpone or move it.

Key points:
  • 11,000 athletes representing more than 200 countries are expected to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, beginning on July 24
  • The coronavirus outbreak has so far infected 80,000 people globally and killed more than 2,700
  • Australian federal Minister for Sport Richard Colbeck has said the country's athletes could be pulled out of the games if their health is at risk 


Canadian official Dick Pound, who has been on the IOC since 1978, estimated there is a three-month window — perhaps a two-month one — to decide the fate of the Tokyo Olympics, meaning a decision could be put off until late May.

"In and around that time, I'd say folks are going to have to ask: 'Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo or not?"' he said.

As the Games draw near, he said, "a lot of things have to start happening. You've got to start ramping up your security, your food, the Olympic Village, the hotels. The media folks will be in there building their studios".

If the IOC decides the Games cannot go forward as scheduled in Tokyo, "you're probably looking at a cancellation," he said.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-26/not-long-decide-olympics-fate-say...

 

See also:

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/37998

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34414

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/4555

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32482

 

 

 

Read from top.

the 5-ring circus still going ahead ....

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the Tokyo Olympic Games will go ahead as planned in July, despite coronavirus concerns resulting in the postponement of sporting events.

Abe added the International Olympic Committee (IOC) would have the final decision whether Tokyo 2020 goes ahead.

"We will overcome the spread of the infection and host the Olympics without problem, as planned," Abe said.

Japan has had more than 1,400 cases and 28 deaths resulting from coronavirus.

The Tokyo Games is expected to cost about 1.35 trillion yen (£10.26bn), organisers said in December.

The Japan section of the Olympic Torch relay is due to start in Fukushima on 26 March. The recent torch-lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia was held without spectators, before the rest of the relay in Greece was suspended to avoid attracting crowds.

Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike said: "We're taking thorough infection measures with regards to the torch relay domestically."

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/51888491

 

 

Read from top.  No spectators, no competitors, plenty of advertising?... Virtual reality competitions? Radio-active flame?...

sore losers...

 

US Takes Aim at Kamila Valieva But Did It Forget About The Exum Findings & Case of Carl Lewis?

 

The controversy surrounding 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive drug test has gripped the world and has turned the Beijing Winter Olympics on its head. Instead of celebrating the achievements of the world’s best athletes, bureaucrats, media, and lawyers are bickering over who is to blame.

 

Valieva became the first female figure skater to land a quadruple axel in Olympic competition during the team figure skating event. Her groundbreaking performance helped Russian athletes secure the gold in team figure skating, until Valieva’s December 25, 2021, drug test came to light and put the medal ceremony on ice.

 

Just mere moments after Valieva landed the first-ever quadruple jump by a woman at the Olympics, reports began to emerge that she had failed a drug test that had been administered ahead of the Beijing Games. In the days since, the US has led the war path, going so far as threatening Valieva's coaches with prosecution under the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act.

The politics surrounding the developments were kicked up a notch when the International Testing Agency, the leading anti-doping agency for the Beijing Olympics, noted in a report that the young skater had failed a test that weeks later showed traces of the banned heart medication trimetazidine.

 

It has since been determined that the test results, which were only obtained by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) on February 7, 2022 - the same day of Valieva's winning Olympic performance, were severely delayed after a Swedish lab in Stockholm was backed up with COVID-19 tests.

 

The Russian Olympic Committee, defending RUSADA’s decision to allow Valieva to compete in the Olympics, stated, "the doping test of an athlete who tested positive does not apply to the period of the Olympic Games. At the same time, the athlete repeatedly passed doping tests before and after December 25, 2021, including while already in Beijing during the figure skating tournament. All the results are negative."

 

The idea of an Olympic athlete failing a drug test right before or during the Olympics has brought some in the American media to a crossroads. The title of an article by Christine Brennan of USA Today tells you everything you need to know, “Russian Kamila Valieva must be suspended. If not, the Olympics are forever tainted.

 

If Christine Brennan can’t stomach the idea of a national Olympic federation allowing one of their athletes to compete following a failed drug test that contains a minor amount of a banned substance weeks before the start of the Beijing Olympics, then she should consider emigrating because her own country - the US - is one of the worst offenders.

 

USOC's Long Documented History of Cover-ups

 

The former director of the United States Olympic Committee's (USOC) drug control administration, Dr. Wade Exum, filed two lawsuits against USOC for discrimination in the early 2000s and alleged that the agency knowingly allowed American athletes to compete after failing drug tests throughout the 1980s and 90s.

In his suit, he stated that he believed not “being a team player,” and covering up doping violations led to his dismissal, as well as his race. Exum wasn’t alone in raising concern over the USOC's desire to prioritize athletic excellence over integrity.

 

His predecessor, Dr. Robert Voy, M.D., the chief medical officer of the USOC from 1983 to 1989, supported his claims and left the agency after seeing how doping violations were buried. He later wrote a book titled “Drugs, Sports, and Politics.”

 

In it, he wrote, "Based on my experience and expertise, I believe that the USOC and/or the various NGBs, have covered-up evidence of American Olympic level athletes testing positive for banned PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)."

 

At the time of the allegations, in the early 2000s, the USOC dismissed them as false. Documents provided by Exum revealed that US athletes tested positive for drugs over 100 times between 1988 and 2000, but only a handful were barred from competition.

The USOC claimed that they had valid reasons for the dismissal of their athlete’s positive tests. It’s likely that those athletes' chances of ending up on the podium had something to do with it.

The Case of Carl Lewis

 

Carl Lewis remains one of the most famous American track and field athletes. The nine-time Olympic gold medal winner was dominant in the 100- and 200- meter sprints, as well as the long jump.

 

After winning three gold medals in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, Lewis was among the favorites to repeat in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and long jump at the 1988 Seoul Games. However, prior to the Olympics in 1988, he failed three tests for stimulants found in a cold medication.

Lewis was first disqualified by the USOC but was later reinstated when they accepted his appeal on the basis of inadvertent use. The USOC allowed Lewis to fail three tests the same way and accepted the excuse of inadvertent use.

 

Years later, in 2003, Lewis said, “There were hundreds of people getting off.” He added, “Everyone was treated the same.”

 

Lewis wasn’t the only high-profile American athlete to get a pass from USOC. Sprinter Joe DeLoach and tennis star Mary Joe Fernandez also appeared in the documents provided by Exum, whose positive tests were swept under the rug.

DeLoach, the gold medal winner in the 200 meters in the 1988 Olympics, also failed a drug test prior to the games. He too had tested positive for a substance found in cold medication. The International Association of Athletics Federations investigated the matter in 2003 and said his positive test contained a low dosage. The use of cold medication appeared to be popular among elite US sprinters.

 

Fernandez won the bronze for singles tennis and a gold medal in doubles in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Before the 1992 Olympic tennis competition, she tested positive for pseudoephedrine but faced no discipline.

 

The contents of Exum’s documents spanning from 1988 to 2000 showed that 19 individuals who tested positive but faced no suspensions would go on to win medals.

 

The issue of the USOC covering up positive tests goes back even further. According to a report from the Orange County Register, 34 American track-and-field athletes tested positive for banned substances before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. None of the athletes were disciplined and were instead told to get clean before the games.

 

When Exum brought to light the USOC’s dirty laundry, few were surprised.

 

Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency from 1999 to 2007, in a telephone interview with the Associated Press in 2003, said of Exum’s accusations, ''It's what many people suspected about the US Olympic Committee, that it was being covered up.'' He added, ''There were lots of rumors around.''

 

Exum's findings bring to mind the old saying: “the cover-up is worse than the crime."

The USOC Never Faced Any Real Backlash

However, the USOC never faced any consequences over the accusations, and they have largely faded into the background over the past two decades.

 

Part of the reason the USOC skirted criticism is that Exum’s discrimination complaints never gained legal traction, and the courts determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the USOC discriminated against Exum on a racial bias.

 

While Exum’s claims of discrimination may have been difficult to prove, the evidence he brought to light about the USOC’s practice of protecting athletes with positive doping tests was from their own records. His legal failure had nothing to do with the USOC’s wrongdoing.

All of this raises the question, has the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) changed?

For two decades, the USOPC has fostered a reputation of protecting athletes with questionable testings, a claim supported by multiple investigations and documents. In the two decades since, there has hardly been a peep. Did they learn their lesson? Or did they simply get better at covering up?

The USOPC, unlike most national Olympic committees, does not receive a consistent annual grant from the government. It instead relies on corporate and individual contributions and on the proceeds of its direct marketing program, predominantly licensing the images of its more successful athletes on cereal boxes and other products.

The USOPC is as much a corporate brand as it is a sports booster. A company that profits off of Americans’ interest in the Olympics, USOPC understands that Americans dominating the medal stands is a good place to start, but so is avoiding scandal. The motivation for the USOPC to hide positive doping tests is coming from all directions.

The United States can finger wag about morality and the true spirit of sport all they want. There is documentation of them spending two decades, from 1980 to 2000, hiding athletes' testing results from the spotlight. Whether or not they’ve done so over the past two decades remains to be seen. With the number of medals stripped from their athletes, professional baseball’s own steroid reckoning, and the American cultural value of being the best, there’s reason to believe the past 20 years were a lot like the 20 that preceded them. But perhaps, only time will tell?

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/20220213/us-takes-aim-at-kamila-valieva-but-did-it-forget-about-the-exum-findings--case-of-carl-lewis-1092976695.html

 

 

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IOC bastards...

 

Although the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) stated that Russian skater Kamila Valieva may continue to compete at the 2022 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruled out a medal ceremony for the Russian figure skating team as well as for Valieva should she win the Women’s Single Skating tournament.

"It's really a nightmare," Lucien W Valloni, a Swiss-based sports lawyer. "I know a lot of sportsmen that have been involved in doping scandals, and I've represented them, and all of them had big, big pressure on them because of these allegations, which were not always true. Likewise, in the [Valieva] case, we do not know whether these claims are true - whether everything is correct. It seems not. And so the pressure is very high and her image is heavily damaged."

According to Valloni, a huge question mark hangs above the recent behaviour of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and IOC. The Russian teenage skater has been singled out by these organisations "as being a cheater", he says adding that this is an especially strong allegation given how much media attention the 2022 Beijing Olympics has received and he suggests that WADA and the IOC have not seemed to follow their own codes of conduct.

 

"They have put rules in place and they accept that minors need more protection," Valloni says. "But in this case the IOC violated this rule quite heavily by leaking her name and confirming who was affected by it."

 

For its part, WADA has yet to provide a convincing explanation as to why its Stockholm laboratory returned the results of Valieva's anti-doping test after a staggering gap of 45 days - when the Olympic Games in Beijing were in full swing - instead of the required 20.

 

"I think there were two problems," says Valloni. "The test was too late and the information was handed out, and WADA has been silent about both, but is trying to do everything to ensure that the athlete is suspended, you know. So, they are trying to do things which are in contravention of the correct application of the WADA code."

 

After Valieva was allowed to compete under the CAS decision, the IOC stepped in and stripped her and her team of any potential medal ceremony. "I think that's quite strange," Valloni says. "I have never seen that before, and I don't know what it has to do with protecting a minor."

 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/20220214/sports-experts-ioc--wada-tore-up-their-own-rulebooks-to-harass-russian-teenage-skater-valieva-1093030087.html

 

 

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IT'S ALL ABOUT "RUSSIA"...

See also: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/34414

 

 

 

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olympicusys.......

 

 

 

By Brian Toohey

 

Will Australian athletes face a similar ban on participation in the Olympics for their government’s wars of aggression?

Anthony Albanese’s government is violating the Olympic Charter by supporting bans on Russian and Belarusian athletes attending the Paris games in 2024.

Since 2015, the Olympic Charter’s Article Six states, The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries. They bring together the athletes selected by their respective National Olympic Committees.

As explained further below, there is more than a touch of hypocrisy in Albanese’s stand.

President Putin and his inner circle are responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. Olympic athletes from Russia and Belarus are not. Although they have done nothing wrong, they will be the ones who’ll be punished if Western politicians, including Australia’s, have their way. Putin will be barely affected.

Many of these athletes excel in their chosen fields, inspiring others to participate in peaceful sporting endeavours in future. Contestants from other countries do the same, but don’t face the prospect of their right to participate being snatched away.

In announcing decision to join the Western ban on innocent athletes, the Albanese government said, “In Russia and Belarus sport and politics are closely intertwined”. The same applies in Australia where governments fund Olympic sports and many others, as well as funding training institutes and building stadiums. The ban risks encouraging hatred of all Russians.

The Australian Olympic Committee supports the International Olympic Committee’s position, “The role of sport is to bring the world together through peaceful competition [and] promote harmony”. The IOC said its role “is not to punish individual athletes for the policies and action of their governments. We cannot discriminate against athletes based on their passports or the actions of their governments.”

The Australian government also questioned whether it was feasible for athletes from Russia and Belarus “to compete as neutrals”. There is little reason to accept this. Last year’s ban on tennis players from countries competing at Wimbledon in 2022 is instructive. This Grand Slam event turned into a farce after the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson convinced tournament officials to ban Russian and Belarusian players. Most do not even live in those countries. None are known to support the invasion. But all should retain the right to refuse to state their views on any political issue, despite the attempts by a British minister to make tennis players do so.

UK government sources told The Times there were fears the trophy presentation could have been a “sports-washing victory for Russia” and “embarrassing” for Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, who was due to present the trophies. This could have been avoided if a former tennis champion presented the trophies. Russians and Belarusians have subsequently entered tournaments without a scrap of evidence that these could have turned into a “sports washing victory” for Russia or Belarus.

The same is likely to apply if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete at the Paris Olympics. Nevertheless, it would help if all governments adhered to the Olympic rules stating the games “are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries”.

These ideals are not always upheld as countries jostle to host the games. Some have attempted to become host corruptly. Ridiculous spending on venues has eased a little. Some events are marred by drug taking. The focus on tables listing which country is winning the most medals remains stronger than the focus on individual athletes, especially in the less glamorous events.

There is a strong case for putting Putin on trial for the crime of starting a war of aggression. However, President Biden wants Putin to stand trial without explaining where or how. The obvious point to make is that the US has not recognised the International Criminal Court which prosecutes war crimes.

Australia is due to host the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. Athletes should hope Australian governments don’t initiate a war of aggression which leads other countries to ban their participation.

This may not be as far-fetched as it may seem. Australian has engaged in wars of aggression in the past, including Iraq and Vietnam and gone unsanctioned thanks to America’s global dominance. This is fading and the past immunity may no longer apply.

Australia joined the UK and the US in invading Iraq in 2003. The flimsy rationale was that intelligence showed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction at that time and was easily exposed as phoney. John Howard, Tony Blair and George W. Bush allegedly committed the war crime of aggression – just as Putin has by invading Ukraine.

In Vietnam, Australia joined the US in a civil war that followed President Eisenhower’s hugely consequential act of foreign interference to stop an election going ahead. An international conference had arranged the ballot to choose a president and unite the country. Eisenhower later said the election had to be stopped because Ho Chi Minh, the leader in Hanoi, would have won easily. When it was clear that America (and Australia) had lost the war, a revengeful US carpet bombed Hanoi and Haiphong, dropping over 20,000 tons of bombs. Putin has dropped a tiny fraction of that on Ukraine.

Another act of aggression could happen because Australian governments host US forces here. There is no constraint on whether these forces can be used for aggressive purposes, nor whether Australia tags along to another foreign war.

Albanese has refused to say whether he has told the Americans they must not engage in aggression from Australian bases. From this, it can be understood that he hasn’t.

To restore Australia as an independent country we need to scrap the offensive wording in the 2014 US- Australia Force Posture Agreement which both sides of politics support. Article 7’s wording about the prepositioned materiel for US Forces and its storage is unacceptable. Similar considerations apply to military forces, such as B-52 bombers at Tindal in the Northern Territory and the Marines and their fighter planes near Darwin, as well as the US Navy ships and submarines soon to be rotated through Australia. The Force Posture agreement says the US will have “exclusive control over the access to, use of, and disposition of such prepositioned materiel and shall have the unencumbered right to remove it at any time from the territory of Australia”.

The provision to give US “exclusive use” of this war material is disturbing, especially if it includes weapons and other equipment that can used in a war of aggression without Australia’s permission. It is not clear how this fits with the Labor government’s new policy that Australian and US military equipment should be interchangeable. But the existing arrangements are incompatible with Australia’s claim to be independent country.

 

 

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olimpicus bannus......

The International Olympic Committee’s position that Israeli athletes aren’t responsible for the actions of their government is “outrageous” given the IOC’s blanket ban on Russia on those very grounds, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.

“The IOC has discredited itself entirely,” Lavrov told reporters, accusing the body of “demonstrating its political activism time and again.”

“Whatever fits the interests of the West, mainly the US, they support and look for formulas to make it work,” the Russian foreign minister added.

According to Russian Sports Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, the IOC “changed shoes in mid-air” in order to accommodate Israel and the conflict endorsed by the US.

On Wednesday, the German agency DPA published a statement by an IOC spokesperson warning the participants of the upcoming Paris Olympics not to engage in any “discriminatory behavior”against Israeli athletes.

“The IOC is committed to the concept of individual responsibility and athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their governments,” the spokesman said, adding that if anything like that happens, the IOC will “ensure that swift action is taken, as during the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.”

During the Tokyo games, Algerian judoka Fethi Nourine withdrew from the competition to avoid a possible match with Israel's Tohar Butbul. Nourine and his coach were both punished by the IOC with a 10-year ban.

 

Meanwhile, the IOC’s position on Ukrainians refusing to face athletes from Russia and Belarus – already forced to compete under neutral flags – is to “encourage … the necessary degree of sensitivity.”

There was no mention of “individual responsibility” last month, when the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee, claiming its decision to include athletes from Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye – four regions that voted to join Russia last year – “constitutes a breach of the Olympic Charter because it violates the territorial integrity” of Ukraine. 

The IOC also claimed that its “values-based course of action” has been endorsed by the “vast majority of the international community,” pointing to the position of the US and its G7 allies. The IOC also interpreted the statement by the Non-Aligned Movement – that athletes from all 206 national committees should participate at the Paris Olympics – as a blanket endorsement of its ban on Russia and Belarus.

In September, IOC President Thomas Bach said that Russian and Belarusian athletes could be allowed to compete in Paris – under a neutral flag – if they “do not support the war and are not linked to the military, or to other services” in their countries.

According to Chernyshenko, Russia has always advocated for equality of athletes and its position – unlike that of the IOC – remains unchanged. Meanwhile, Lavrov told reporters that Moscow will follow through on President Vladimir Putin’s initiative to organize a series of sporting events that will actually be international, universal, and respectful of the principles in the Olympic Charter, “which the IOC has grossly violated.”

 

https://www.rt.com/news/586448-russia-olympic-hypocrisy-paris/

 

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