More lame Russia bashing

[BullsFan22]

Re:

No one will want to host the Olympics in the future it's a farce. Corruption in the building of the Olympic village and surrounds means the accommodation is rarely up to scratch and already falling to pieces because it is built on the cheap. Look at the World Cup and all of the issues with the new stadiums. A lot of countries did not even turn a profit hosting the Olympics and as the doping gets worse people will lose even more interest. IOC.......... file next to FIFA. A bunch of bureaucratic bandits who know exactly what they are doing when countries like Russia, Dubai and Brazil get to host big sporting events, the fertile field of corruption could not have been better prepared for them.

Yeaaah, Dubai is not a country. It's the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). I get your point though. I know a few Olympians that took part in Sochi and they said everything looked just fine with them. Of course, everybody tries to show the 'good side' of their country and the host city/venues. It seems, like Sochi before it, they are trying to bring down and antagonize Rio and the Brazilians before the games even begin. I understand the need to do that for the media to talk about something 'dramatic,' but who knows how much of what the media says about Rio is actually true? All of it or some of it? I will say that one of the reasons why countries are hesitant to host games in the future is the extremely high cost. It's the same as building new sports arenas in the US. Not many middle class citizens want to pay high taxes to fund a billionaire's arena that he/she could easily fund with the help of their business/partners.

 

[Cookster15]

Re: Re:

No one will want to host the Olympics in the future it's a farce. Corruption in the building of the Olympic village and surrounds means the accommodation is rarely up to scratch and already falling to pieces because it is built on the cheap. Look at the World Cup and all of the issues with the new stadiums. A lot of countries did not even turn a profit hosting the Olympics and as the doping gets worse people will lose even more interest. IOC.......... file next to FIFA. A bunch of bureaucratic bandits who know exactly what they are doing when countries like Russia, Dubai and Brazil get to host big sporting events, the fertile field of corruption could not have been better prepared for them.

Because only western countries organizing sporting events would be indication of equal treatment and of absence of corruption. Got it.

And it's not Dubai, dumby, it's Qatar

At least in Western countries payment being facilitated with wheelbarrows of cash is not generally acceptable. Neither are payments to government officers. The World Cup being awarded by Seth Blatter's cronies to Qatar was blatant. Socialism is supposed to equalise wealth yet in Brazil it has protected the rich at the expense of those poor people living in slums and ghettos. The Brazilian beneficiaries of Rio 2016 won't be those Brazilians living in poverty.

 

[BullsFan22]

Re: Re:

No one will want to host the Olympics in the future it's a farce. Corruption in the building of the Olympic village and surrounds means the accommodation is rarely up to scratch and already falling to pieces because it is built on the cheap. Look at the World Cup and all of the issues with the new stadiums. A lot of countries did not even turn a profit hosting the Olympics and as the doping gets worse people will lose even more interest. IOC.......... file next to FIFA. A bunch of bureaucratic bandits who know exactly what they are doing when countries like Russia, Dubai and Brazil get to host big sporting events, the fertile field of corruption could not have been better prepared for them.

Because only western countries organizing sporting events would be indication of equal treatment and of absence of corruption. Got it.

And it's not Dubai, dumby, it's Qatar

At least in Western countries payment being facilitated with wheelbarrows of cash is not generally acceptable. Neither are payments to government officers. The World Cup being awarded by Seth Blatter's cronies to Qatar was blatant. Socialism is supposed to equalise wealth yet in Brazil it has protected the rich at the expense of those poor people living in slums and ghettos. The Brazilian beneficiaries of Rio 2016 won't be those Brazilians living in poverty.

I don't know if you've heard or read, but apparently the 1998 and 2006 winning bids (France and Germany respectively) were won through bribes.

 

[AlbineVespuzzio]

Re: Re:

No one will want to host the Olympics in the future it's a farce. Corruption in the building of the Olympic village and surrounds means the accommodation is rarely up to scratch and already falling to pieces because it is built on the cheap. Look at the World Cup and all of the issues with the new stadiums. A lot of countries did not even turn a profit hosting the Olympics and as the doping gets worse people will lose even more interest. IOC.......... file next to FIFA. A bunch of bureaucratic bandits who know exactly what they are doing when countries like Russia, Dubai and Brazil get to host big sporting events, the fertile field of corruption could not have been better prepared for them.

Because only western countries organizing sporting events would be indication of equal treatment and of absence of corruption. Got it.

And it's not Dubai, dumby, it's Qatar

At least in Western countries payment being facilitated with wheelbarrows of cash is not generally acceptable.

It's called hypocrisy. We say we don't like it because of Moral and all of that, but we do it anyway.

Neither are payments to government officers. The World Cup being awarded by Seth Blatter's cronies to Qatar was blatant.

Same as the others. Your point?

 

[movingtarget]

The original ideals of the Olympics were lost as soon as it lost it's amateur status and even before that as the East and West battled for bragging rights. It's an event going nowhere, too costly, too farcical and too corrupt. In Beijing they filled the stadiums full of school children to save embarrassment.with low ticket sales. The pollution was so bad that the women in the road cycling race said they could barely breath. And security will be a bigger and bigger problem. Who would want to be in charge of security at the Qatar World Cup ? Even Brazil will need massive security. In Sochi they used the Russian army. Each sport has a world championships every year and the cost of holding such events is nothing compared to the Olympic lunacy. Then you have the Commonwealth Games, the University Games, the Defence Force whatever. The money could and should be spent in much better ways.

 

[Robert5091]

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36927077
Russia's weightlifting team has been banned from competing at the Rio Olympics because of doping offences.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) took the step following a series of suspicious test results at the Beijing and London Games.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE, I thought, not Dubai?

Anyway, I think the big issue with the hosting of the Olympics now is the pressure to go bigger and better than the ones before. And that everything has to be brand spanking new. I said it about the awarding of the Winter Olympics to Beijing, a bid that doesn't even include a ski slope big enough to host the downhill, which is to the Winter Olympics what the 100m is to the Summer ones. Bids like Munich didn't go ahead, but their bid involved the 1972 Olympic stadium for opening/closing ceremonies, the World Cup courses at Ruhpolding for biathlon and XC skiing, the World Cup (and former Olympic) ski jump and downhill slopes at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the World Cup luge/bob course at Königssee, and extant stadia and arenas for the ice hockey, skating etc.. Literally only the artistic disciplines for frivolous X-games nonsense like slopestyle needed building. But that's not what they want, because they can't then make money out of the contracting to build the venues. The Sochi Winter Olympiad cost more than every other Winter Olympics in history combined. And even when it came down to the final two, Almaty hosted the Asian Winter Games in 2011, and so had the framework for venues they could renovate and upgrade ready for the Games, but instead they preferred to build a brand spanking new collection of white elephants somewhere else.

Even within established Olympic nations there will be white elephants; there's little need for the Nordic venues from the Torino Winter Games because most of the interest in that side of the sport is in Trentino, Südtirol, Lombardia and Aosta where more established or accessible venues already are, for example. London at least used some established venues and has had enough residual interest to make use of many of the permanent stadia after the Games have gone, but who is going to keep the Qatar 2022 stadia full after the World Cup is gone? Rio has an established sporting history and sufficient population to justify this level of sporting facilities, at least, I just have concerns that it's going to be run in such a way that we can still see them in the same kind of usage and relevance that, say, the 1972 Games sites are in Munich.

 

[Cannibal72]

Re:

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the UAE, I thought, not Dubai?

Anyway, I think the big issue with the hosting of the Olympics now is the pressure to go bigger and better than the ones before. And that everything has to be brand spanking new. I said it about the awarding of the Winter Olympics to Beijing, a bid that doesn't even include a ski slope big enough to host the downhill, which is to the Winter Olympics what the 100m is to the Summer ones. Bids like Munich didn't go ahead, but their bid involved the 1972 Olympic stadium for opening/closing ceremonies, the World Cup courses at Ruhpolding for biathlon and XC skiing, the World Cup (and former Olympic) ski jump and downhill slopes at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the World Cup luge/bob course at Königssee, and extant stadia and arenas for the ice hockey, skating etc.. Literally only the artistic disciplines for frivolous X-games nonsense like slopestyle needed building. But that's not what they want, because they can't then make money out of the contracting to build the venues. The Sochi Winter Olympiad cost more than every other Winter Olympics in history combined. And even when it came down to the final two, Almaty hosted the Asian Winter Games in 2011, and so had the framework for venues they could renovate and upgrade ready for the Games, but instead they preferred to build a brand spanking new collection of white elephants somewhere else.

Even within established Olympic nations there will be white elephants; there's little need for the Nordic venues from the Torino Winter Games because most of the interest in that side of the sport is in Trentino, Südtirol, Lombardia and Aosta where more established or accessible venues already are, for example. London at least used some established venues and has had enough residual interest to make use of many of the permanent stadia after the Games have gone, but who is going to keep the Qatar 2022 stadia full after the World Cup is gone?

You're right about Abu Dhabi.

London is of course an interesting case. On the one hand, the stuff's getting used, which is obviously...good. On the other hand, it's not necessarily being used well. The stadium was given for free to a PL club with no need for it, the portion of the athletes' village being set aside for social housing has had its rates set unacceptably high, Londoners do less exercise since the games.

I confidently expect this to be wiped by the mods, so I'll add a connection to the thread; I think this shows quite nicely the difference between Western sport and that of Russia and China. Western sport isn't perfect. There's a lot wrong with it. But next season an established football club will sell out a stadium in a previously impoverished area of the city which is now getting more prosperous. In Beijing and Sochi, those self-same stadiums stand as white elephants, monuments to the self-obsession of authoritarians, whose construction only harmed local people. The same applies to doping. Trying to argue that Russia's state-sanctioned, state-authorised manipulation of the doping system is OK because Wout Poels drank a can of Coke while putting out xW, and that Russia-bashers are just biased Westerners, is moral relativism plain and simple. Moral relativism wherever it occurs is pseudo-intellectual nonsense (as anyone who's ever debunked the level playing field argument will know).

 

[adamfo]

Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36927077
Russia's weightlifting team has been banned from competing at the Rio Olympics because of doping offences.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) took the step following a series of suspicious test results at the Beijing and London Games.

The International Weightlifting Federation statement:

"We would like to highlight the extremely shocking and disappointing statistics regarding the Russian weightlifters.
The integrity of the weightlifting sport has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians, therefore an appropriate sanction was applied in order to preserve the status of the sport."

AlbineVespuzzio blood must be boiling over at the injustice of it all. It appears only 6, out of the weightlifting team of 8, are named as having failed tests !

 

[carton]

Re:

Corruption in the building of the Olympic village and surrounds means the accommodation is rarely up to scratch and already falling to pieces because it is built on the cheap.

As I understand it the problem is that they were rushed, not cheap. Those apartments are going to private owners who forked over $2,100/m2 ($200/sq. ft.) for them. Not too expensive, but not slum housing either. Particularly considering they're not that close to the beaches (or anything, really).

 

[BullsFan22]

Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36927077
Russia's weightlifting team has been banned from competing at the Rio Olympics because of doping offences.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) took the step following a series of suspicious test results at the Beijing and London Games.

This one just doesn't make sense. This is one of those sports you really can't blame Russians OR anyone else for doping. If you are not doping in weightlifting, you are not doing it right. You are probably disadvantaging yourself. Look at those guys. I know doping isn't all about huge muscles, bulging veins, and being able to lift a ton, but I'd love to know if anyone in this sport that medaled at the Olympics, any Olympics, was clean. You might have to go to pre-WWII times, if at all. Look at all the competitors that have been busted in that sport. Not only that, but a week before the games? I know they were probably waiting for the reports from Beijing and London, but they should have either done something much sooner or nothing at all. The Bulgarians were already DQ'ed entirely before these reports. The Kazakhs, Chinese, Uzbeks, Azerbaijani, Turks, etc have all failed tests in recent weeks. Might as well not hold any weightlifting at Rio. No, I am serious about this. They truly are going deep if they ban the Russians in this particular sport.

 

[adamfo]

Re:

Just a quick reminder of what Coe's and the IAAF decision are going to deprive us in the Olympic Games:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwJsmDowiYU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POckWq-93Uo

She serves as a symbol of the unfairness of the decision, not just because of her superior technique (unmatchable, even to most men specialists), but also because this discipline is one of those where drugs are of little use (they probably all use something to increase muscle strenght, but the difference maker is the technique)

Pole Vaulters get busted too. At least 4 in the modern era including Janine Whitlock in 2002 for Methandienone, resulting in a 2 year ban.

 

[veganrob]

Good read here about the crook Craig Reedie

https://www.propublica.org/article/olympics-top-investigator-secret-efforts-undermine-russian-doping-probe?utm_campaign=bt_facebook&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

 

[movingtarget]

Good read here about the crook Craig Reedie

https://www.propublica.org/article/olympics-top-investigator-secret-efforts-undermine-russian-doping-probe?utm_campaign=bt_facebook&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Great article. And once again officialdom takes a beating.

 

[luckyboy]

Depressing

 

[Robert5091]

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36970627
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said his country will have "the cleanest team" at the Games.
:lol:

 

[BullsFan22]

Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36970627
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said his country will have "the cleanest team" at the Games.
:lol:

Just out of curiosity, who do you think will have the 'cleanest team' at the Games?

 

[PeterB]

Re: Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36970627
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said his country will have "the cleanest team" at the Games.
:lol:

Just out of curiosity, who do you think will have the 'cleanest team' at the Games?

Clever attempt at changing the subject of discussion... but let's stay with Russia as the country the statement referred to, shall we. So, just out of curiosity, don't you deem that statement ridiculous in the context of everything?

 

[SeriousSam]

It's hard to say ex ante.

We need to await the doping tests to be carried out at the Olympics. If passing a test is a strong signal of cleanliness, then if the Russian athletes pass those tests, they will be amongst the cleanest teams at the Olympics.

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36970627
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said his country will have "the cleanest team" at the Games.
:lol:

Just out of curiosity, who do you think will have the 'cleanest team' at the Games?

The IOC will be hoping it is Russia !

 

[BullsFan22]

Re: Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36970627
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said his country will have "the cleanest team" at the Games.
:lol:

Just out of curiosity, who do you think will have the 'cleanest team' at the Games?

Clever attempt at changing the subject of discussion... but let's stay with Russia as the country the statement referred to, shall we. So, just out of curiosity, don't you deem that statement ridiculous in the context of everything?

Since this thread is named 'more lame Russia bashing,' and the previous post clearly demonstrates that, then no, i don't find it ridiculous, certainly not in the context of this thread. Since this is the clinic, and we discuss all things doping, and thousands of threads/topics/posts have looked at doping from just about all parts of the globe, some more egregious than others, and some from certain parts of the world where they act 'holier-than-thou' where in fact they have just as much of a problem with it as anyone else with money and resources and interests, then my question really isn't ridiculous and it's quite ok to post it, given the nature of modern sports: doping, corruption, politics, hypocrisy, power struggle, etc.

 

[movingtarget]

Re: Re:

http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/36970627
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said his country will have "the cleanest team" at the Games.
:lol:

Just out of curiosity, who do you think will have the 'cleanest team' at the Games?

Clever attempt at changing the subject of discussion... but let's stay with Russia as the country the statement referred to, shall we. So, just out of curiosity, don't you deem that statement ridiculous in the context of everything?

Since this thread is named 'more lame Russia bashing,' and the previous post clearly demonstrates that, then no, i don't find it ridiculous, certainly not in the context of this thread. Since this is the clinic, and we discuss all things doping, and thousands of threads/topics/posts have looked at doping from just about all parts of the globe, some more egregious than others, and some from certain parts of the world where they act 'holier-than-thou' where in fact they have just as much of a problem with it as anyone else with money and resources and interests, then my question really isn't ridiculous and it's quite ok to post it, given the nature of modern sports: doping, corruption, politics, hypocrisy, power struggle, etc.

Why shouldn't Russia be the cleanest team, if the IOC thinks they have made the correct decision then there should be less chance of Russia showing as many problems as other teams. If the opposite happens then the countries that complained that the IOC was too lenient have a point. That said I expect the problems will be found not with just one country. But it was found before the Olympics that the testing lab in Rio was not up to scratch anyway and I think steps were going to be taken about that. The whole thing is a farce. There is probably more honesty in Hollywood these days than there is in sport and that includes officials and coaches.

 

[sniper]

Jamie Fuller blog on Lewis and Johnson 1988:
http://watercooler.skins.net/2016/08/07/seoul-1988-first-amongst-equals-lewis-and-johnson/

Bruyneel knows the score:
https://twitter.com/JohanBruyneel/status/762283382701252608
https://twitter.com/JohanBruyneel/status/762283479472177152

 

[Benotti69]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/sports/olympics/lest-we-forget-the-us-too-spent-time-in-the-doping-wilderness.html?_r=0

"Lest We Forget, the U.S., Too, Spent Time in the Doping Wilderness"

I would guess the US is still very much embedded in the Doping Wilderness with its Humvees, Drones, B52s, Nukes, etc..

 

[BullsFan22]

Re:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/sports/olympics/lest-we-forget-the-us-too-spent-time-in-the-doping-wilderness.html?_r=0

"Lest We Forget, the U.S., Too, Spent Time in the Doping Wilderness"

I would guess the US is still very much embedded in the Doping Wilderness with its Humvees, Drones, B52s, Nukes, etc..

Yeah, while it's nice someone finally had the cojones to write on the double standards and the hypocrisy, they still didn't want to go all out. They still wanted to defend their own 'ways.' It may have been doping, BUT....BUT, it's not state-sponsored, and we don't kill our 'potential' or 'would-be' whistleblowers!! See, we are angels compared to the Russians! One step forward, two steps back. If that's the right analogy in this case.

And let's say that it's to the dot true that Russian government sponsored 'secret service' officials to go in and administer doping but also manipulate doping tests at Sochi and potentially elsewhere. Fine. But isn't the USOC funded by the US government? And shouldn't one think that, given how much the US Gov't, along with its patsies the NSA, FBI and CIA are hell-bent on taping phone calls, spying and god knows what else, that they would know what was going on at the time (and still goes on, in all likelihood)? The author doesn't want to go that far. He knows that he'll open up a massive can of worms if he dug that deep and went that far through the rabbit hole. Do you want a blue pill or red pill (thank you for that quote, Wachowskis and Laurence Fishbourne!!)?

Though I give Mr. Powell some credit for at least poking through the hypocrisy. Not sure how many of the readers will actually care about the message.