Deleted member 651465
D
Deleted member 651465
Seemed pretty cut and dry, but now it's official.
However, this part caught my attention....
Rio Olympics 2016: Russia fails to overturn athlete ban
Seemed pretty cut and dry, but now it's official.
However, this part caught my attention....
Man of Honour
I think them being allowed to compete as neutrals is fine, providing they are stringently tested for drugs.
It's bad for Olympics as a whole to have such a massive player banned, but Russia have obviously gotten away with it for far too long.
It's bad for Olympics as a whole to have such a massive player banned, but Russia have obviously gotten away with it for far too long.
Soldato
I'm impressed that the threat was backed up with action as I thought the authorities would cave in at some point. When this started I'm sure the Russian's had much the same idea. "Russia Strong! We are too important to be banned from Rio."
As time has gone on they began to realise that they weren't missed as much as they thought they would be.
I doubt many will be able to compete as neutrals either. Almost all Russians train and compete solely in the Motherland safe from independent drug testers and will only surface on the international stage when competition time arises. By then all the doping, err... training has been done. Any that do will probably be branded as traitors!
I won't miss them. Whenever a Russian, and in particular the women, won a gold medal it was always a case of starting the stop watch to see how long it was before they got banned.
As time has gone on they began to realise that they weren't missed as much as they thought they would be.
I doubt many will be able to compete as neutrals either. Almost all Russians train and compete solely in the Motherland safe from independent drug testers and will only surface on the international stage when competition time arises. By then all the doping, err... training has been done. Any that do will probably be branded as traitors!
I won't miss them. Whenever a Russian, and in particular the women, won a gold medal it was always a case of starting the stop watch to see how long it was before they got banned.
Man of Honour
Good. Hope they ban the whole lot from the Olympics just because of all the people in many sports that have been cheated of medals. This might as well be state sponsored terrorism and as such can only be punished by a complete ban. Letting competitors in as neutrals just stinks of weakness by the authorities.
The ban has to stay in place until such time it can be conclusively shown that all sports are clean even if it takes a number of years.
The ban has to stay in place until such time it can be conclusively shown that all sports are clean even if it takes a number of years.
Man of Honour
The reaction from a number of Russian media outlets has been interesting if somewhat predictable in that they are claiming this is a politically motivated act. This action alone won't convince those who think that doping is widespread in athletics but I think it's a step in the right direction - it is, of course, very unfortunate for any Russian athletes who are clean and I think that allowing them to compete and neutrals is the best of a not particularly great set of options.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Kenya and any other nations who are struggling to meet WADA requirements. It's bad for the sport to miss high quality competitors but it would be worse to have some dirty little compromise which basically ignored the issue.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Kenya and any other nations who are struggling to meet WADA requirements. It's bad for the sport to miss high quality competitors but it would be worse to have some dirty little compromise which basically ignored the issue.
Every athlete from every country is juicing, you'd be mad to think they aren't nowadays. There's too much at stake not to.
Problem is, if you open up and legalise it, some will find more inventive ways of taking it further and abusing it.
Can't win either way.
That's also not taking into account well being of the athletes if they are basically expected to stick as many substances into themselves as possible (or even impossible) and their longer term health.
Is there any update on the recent UK doping accusations from the other thread ? I guess that will be too late for the Olympics.
Surprising Seb Coe has not been on the news to discuss/condone the Russian ban too.
If you did not see it, the recent Horizon sport doping program was interesting.
(I had not heard of transcortex electrical stimulation before, to increase pain threshold )
Surprising Seb Coe has not been on the news to discuss/condone the Russian ban too.
If you did not see it, the recent Horizon sport doping program was interesting.
(I had not heard of transcortex electrical stimulation before, to increase pain threshold )
Indeed, without any Co troll you will then have all sorts of incredibly dangEros drugs injected into a the let's with little.concern for long term health. If you have such controls then you are back to where we currently are with athletes and countries working around the rules.
Caporegime
I would like to see more drugs testing across most sports, that are considerably more neutral and transparent.
Man of Honour
No blanket ban. IOC sits on the fence by letting individual sport's governing bodies to decide if Russian competitors are clean and should be allowed to take part:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/36878983
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/36878983
Man of Honour
Eugh, completely and utterly bottled it. No great surprise but it's still disappointing, I had hoped that the scale of the problem would be enough to convince the IOC to take some sort of firm action but nope, even when you think they couldn't be any less useful they manage to do that. As Matthew Pinsent says they've essentially thrown a hospital pass to the individual federations and said "your problem now". It's a pretty disgraceful abrogation of responsibility.
Now my vague hope is that all the individual federations implement a ban on Russian competitors competing for their country and write a joint open letter to the IOC saying something along the lines of "we've taken the decisive action you should have taken, as an organisation you're either unable or unwilling to stand up for the Olympic ideals and as such you're unfit to govern it in your present form". I very much doubt it will happen but the IOC has been derelict in their duty with such a lame ruling.
It's even worse that they've also said previously banned Russian athletes are unable to compete so the whistleblower Yulia Stepanova can't compete but athletes from other nations who were previously banned for drug offences are still able to compete if their nation allows it e.g. US and Justin Gatlin amongst others. What kind of message does that send to whistleblowers? It's one thing to say that if you're found guilty of doping once that you can never compete again but either make it universal or don't bother, this just looks punitive towards Stepanova.
Now my vague hope is that all the individual federations implement a ban on Russian competitors competing for their country and write a joint open letter to the IOC saying something along the lines of "we've taken the decisive action you should have taken, as an organisation you're either unable or unwilling to stand up for the Olympic ideals and as such you're unfit to govern it in your present form". I very much doubt it will happen but the IOC has been derelict in their duty with such a lame ruling.
It's even worse that they've also said previously banned Russian athletes are unable to compete so the whistleblower Yulia Stepanova can't compete but athletes from other nations who were previously banned for drug offences are still able to compete if their nation allows it e.g. US and Justin Gatlin amongst others. What kind of message does that send to whistleblowers? It's one thing to say that if you're found guilty of doping once that you can never compete again but either make it universal or don't bother, this just looks punitive towards Stepanova.
Soldato
Apart from blanket bans are or never should be the solution.
I'm probably wrong but will make the statement and am happy to be corrected as the story was a while ago and my interest minimal: I notice when Dwayne Chambers was found guilty of doping there were not calls to ban the entire men's athletics team.
Could political reasoning be behind the motivation?
Agree with others, very few athletes will not dope in some way
I'm probably wrong but will make the statement and am happy to be corrected as the story was a while ago and my interest minimal: I notice when Dwayne Chambers was found guilty of doping there were not calls to ban the entire men's athletics team.
Could political reasoning be behind the motivation?
Agree with others, very few athletes will not dope in some way
Man of Honour
I can't rule out political motivation in that it's difficult to prove a negative, for some sport might be war minus the shooting as George Orwell said so maybe you can view it as a surrogate for projecting national power. Maybe you're right that political pressure has been brought to bear but perhaps not in the way you think as Russia have got off very lightly for what appears to be a state sponsored doping programme.
The situations with Dwayne Chambers is simply not comparable. That was one man on the GB team (or on the fringes of it at least) who was individually doping, there was no evidence that he was part of an organised scheme run by GB - the evidence here points to a massive, coordinated scheme with collusion from across Russian athletics including from their anti-doping organisation. If Dwayne Chambers had been part of a national scheme then I could see the comparison and could see an argument for banning team GB, as that wasn't the case then why would it be reasonable to suggest banning the whole team for the actions of one individual?
The suggestion to ban the whole team isn't for a bit of a laugh and it wouldn't rule out the clean athletes competing under a neutral flag provided they could satisfy the testers sufficiently. It is far from ideal to have a blanket ban as it will impact on any athletes who are clean as well as those who are guilty but when there's a national federation systematically cheating then there are few options that will drive home to them how serious it is - maybe the IOC are hoping that shirking responsibility for making a decision will highlight to Russia how seriously they take it.
Soldato
Fair enough. Again though I cannot agree with blanket bans. It actually harms the sport.
In the ones I generally follow. Weightlifting, even the Iranian snatch guy Rahemi (???) he has had people close say he was doping.
If the RF sports body was and can be actively proven to be complicit. Put an umbrella over the athletes and have the umbrella be an independent Olympic authority. If test clean = compete.
I suppose the biggest disappointment is that these athletes feel the need to do this. I am staunchly against PED in tested competitions.
As an avid follower of Strongman, I watch knowing they are on a concoction of steroids and HGH. The difference is doing what they do (becoming monsters) that's maybe what it takes. Even when I was chunking 6/7 meals a day 5-7,000 calories the most I hit was 19st567lb. There is a limit to attainability.