A doping scandal, an epidemic, and a history that is an embarrassment – to many. Let’s see who? Oh my! Oh my!
Olympic Doping has quite a history it would appear: In 2014, the score was; Latvia and Ukraine tied for – 2, Austria, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Russia, Italy – 1. In 2010 we had just one – Poland. In 2006, we had Austria – 7! Russia – 1. In 2002, Austria again came in first with – 4 dopes, Russia – 3, UK, Spain and Belarus – 1. Prior records are sketchy – 1988 – Poland – 1, and 1984 – Mongolia – 1.
Based on the evidence, Austria is the clear winner! Yea, they are forever banned. Oh wait. Never mind.
Doped horses: Ireland is clearly the winner with – 5, Germany – 2, and Norway and Brazil each – 1. And the Winner is!
Doping cases for cyclists is so long it bears pages and pages of names with the US leading the pack in 2012, but by 2015, everyone had hopped on the bandwagon; Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, France, UK, Turkey, Canada, Columbia, US, Czech, Chile, New Zealand, Russia, Slovenia, Algeria, and Venezuela. Pardon me if I unjustly left someone out of the scoring.
So why all the hoopdela suddenly? No one has ever before considered banning an entire country? Gasp, could it be…
Who is making the accusations against Russia? WADA, World Anti-Doping Agency, a French company based in Canada, whose current leader is a British sports administrator, born in Scotland. He was a Badminton player who lobbied for the ‘sport’ to be recognized as an Olympic event and won. He was knighted by the queen of England, for what no one is quite certain. What we DO know is that WADA is apparently an expensive business to run…
WADA 2013 Financial: Salaries and Consulting fees – roughly $13million, travel $3.8million, Grants $4.87million, Admin and IT $4.67million, oh and testing fees, the thing they are created to do – $689,700 representing 2% of their budgeted expenses. Hmmm. As of 2013, their total assets amounted to a whopping $34,563,969 – a nonprofit foundation…
Hillary move over.
Where do they get their funding? Half comes from the Olympic Committee, half from world governments. In 2014, the total budget was over $26 million. Of that, $13 million came from governments. The US, Canada and the UK accounted for 35% of its government funding. Could that be considered a conflict of interests?
In 2013, Jamaica was on WADA’s hit list. In addition, Turkey was host to a significant number of test positives. As a result, WADA issued the following statement, “As we look forward, the fight for a level playing field is faced with many challenges. An example of a very current challenge is the potential influence of an athlete’s entourage. Increasingly, the global anti-doping community is viewing the athlete entourage (coaches, trainers or athlete support personnel) as one of the main influences for athletes that decide to dope.”
Yawn.
And after a scathing article was written and published in France with respect to WADA’s labs being corrupt, WADA released this statement in full repudiation of the claim:
Accredited anti-doping laboratories do not know the names of the athletes whose samples they analyze. Period. Samples are identified by an anonymized code. Only the anti-doping organization (e.g., the sports federation or national anti-doping agency) that has ordered the test is able to match the name of the athlete with the code from the laboratory. It is inaccurate and irresponsible to state that the laboratories are the sources of athlete information.
Today, WADA has issued a statement in which they are closing the laboratory in Russia, after claiming it was corrupt. Oops. They have also stated that their investigation has been rather ‘narrow’ in that they have only targeted Russia. Oops. “The independent commission wants to make it clear that Russia is not the only country with an ineffective anti-doping programme and that athletics is not the only sport with an ineffective anti- doping programme”.
I suppose the question raised is why then only Russia? When Austria and Germany have radical histories of drug abuse?
Cheating is so commonplace, it is glamourized. Elections are rigged, 140% of voter turnout, in Hollywood sleeping with a Director to get a role is so common as to be blasé, Lance Armstrong cheated for decades, what laboratory was implicated? Tiger Woods cheated on his wife. Obama cheated the country with false promises. FIFA officials have been accused of money laundering, taking bribes, racketeering, and fraud. But no ‘country’ was brought down over the scandal which included reps from the US, Australia, Columbia, Switzerland and Costa Rica. In 1919, the White Sox purposefully threw a game. Harvard students expelled for cheating. Bernie Madoff. Chinese athletes stripped of medals because they were too young – but China wasn’t expelled. In 2005, referees in Germany rigged games.
The list is endless. But in a society now bent on a punitive form of justice, we make everyone pay for the mistake of a few. It begins in elementary school where one student’s bad behavior leads to the entire class being punished.
Moral: “Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools who don’t have brains enough to be honest.”
~Benjamin Franklin