OT: Time To Drop Weight Lifting From Olympics?

[RockyMTblue2]

Doing a sports news check this morning I ran across the dreadful doping news out of the London and Beijing Olympics

3 Olympic weightlifting gold medalists fail doping retests

ttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-sport-doping-weightlifting-idUSKCN1072EF

For a time, over a decade, I worked out at what was predominantly a weight lifters club. 90% of them were "juicing" along with their protein powder shakes.

I suspect there will be a huge fall out from these games in wrestling, weight lifting and other sports. Got me thinking about the question of how many other athletes in Rio this month doped and will get away with it. Does anyone think the Russian rowers were clean? Does anyone think China does not have a state doping machine akin to that unearthed in Russia?

Another question: Why does it take so very long to catch up with these cheats? They have reaped the monetary rewards, etc., of their cheating for years and years.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Came across this article focusing on the travesty that is the Russian doping machine, with an absolutely stunning interview on 60 Minutes of the Russian couple who broke the state sponsored doping story. At the top there is a photo of a woman - a Russian track star - from 2010 and her face is a mask of steroid induced acne! "Everyone in Russia is on pharma." Russia's woman 880 Olympic Gold winner. Frankly, Russia is getting off light and the anti-doping protocols and agencies need to get much more rigorous or international competition will suffer irreparably.

More Russian Olympic champions retest positive for dope

 

[UcMiami]

It is a constant escalation of science - discoveries of new chemicals that enhance performance vs. ways to test for them, and wherever profit and prestige exists there is incentive for the less scrupulous.

It also gets into interesting ethics where chemicals that help recovery from injury become banned substances - pro sports deals with this all the time. Things that non-athletes may be prescribed to help in recovery are off the table for athletes. The most distressing for me was in a Tour de France where one of the riders with no chance of distinguishing himself had to pull out because of a bee sting - he had a choice, die or be disqualified because of his allergy and the banned substance required to counteract the poison.

I don't know that any country can hold it's head high in regard to drugs - the 'system' in place in East Germany, and that appears to have been in place now in Russia are perhaps extremes, but the clinic in SF that changed baseball is not that far off.

 

[stamfordhusky]

I don't know that any country can hold it's head high in regard to drugs - the 'system' in place in East Germany, and that appears to have been in place now in Russia are perhaps extremes, but the clinic in SF that changed baseball is not that far off.

I think there is a HUGE difference between state-sponsored doping - as in Russia, China, East Germany - and illicit clinics/trainers who deal in PED's in secrecy. Unfortunately testing is never state-of-the-art enough to catch all of the cheats, but at least the majority of countries, including the U.S., have been trying. MLB, on the other hand, went many years under Bud Selig while they deliberately looked the other way when everyone knew steroid use was rampant.

 

[UcMiami]

I think there is a HUGE difference between state-sponsored doping - as in Russia, China, East Germany - and illicit clinics/trainers who deal in PED's in secrecy. Unfortunately testing is never state-of-the-art enough to catch all of the cheats, but at least the majority of countries, including the U.S., have been trying. MLB, on the other hand, went many years under Bud Selig while they deliberately looked the other way when everyone knew steroid use was rampant.

I think the biggest difference between 'state sponsored' vs. what happens in the USA and other 'western' countries is that the funding is privately sourced instead of institutionalized in a communist command economy. Armstrong and his team was an economic engine that could pay for its technology out of its profits, the SF clinic made millions off millionaire professional athletes whose income was directly proportional to their enhanced bodies, and tacitly approved by their teams. How much knowledge and suspicion the various governing bodies and unions had is always opening to debate, but the phrase 'willful ignorance' comes to mind for all involved.

I agree that the corruption alleged in Russia and the proven complicit of the government in East Germany is extreme, but so was the blindness of most coaches and schools at all levels in the US amateur athletics, and in the professional ranks, and it has not been rooted out either.