Is the Russian Doping Scandal a Bridge Too Far for the Sports Imperialists? See the NYT comments!

I do have huge mixed feelings about the Russian track and field athletes being barred from the Olympic Games.

First, it should have happened at say 1968 and continued (get DDR [East Germany] too while they are at it!) until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union!

But I am opposed to punishing all the athletes because there was apparently widespread doping.

But the New York Times article on the scandal had interesting comments:

VMG from NJ wrote this:

The Olympics ceased to be what they were intended for when they changed the rules to allow professional athletes to compete. The Olympic now are just the springboard for financial gain or bragging rights for the pros.The financial difference between a gold and silver medal is so enormous that the incentive to cheat is always there. I say change the rules back to only amateurs and continue to strictly enforce the no doping rules.

YEA!

Sharif from Philadelphia added this:

Does anyone seriously believe Russian athletes are the only ones doping? They are the ones that got caught. You think Americans are not doping? or Germans or Italians? Wake up and smell the music.

DickH from Rochester raises without saying it openly:  Sports imperialism!

While we blame the Russians, appropriately so, for drug use, we ignore our own complicity in making this possible and inevitable. Our professional sports routinely feature athletes who have been suspended for drug use multiple times, either for performance enhancing or illegal drugs, yet they continue to play their sport. We have superior training facilities and funding – this is our advantage. As a result, other nations can only compete through use of performance enhancing drugs. When winning a medal can be worth millions of dollars, do we really expect that no one will try to use any means possible to win? The upside is significant and, in general, there is only a downside if you are caught and that can be years later. Before you blame any athlete, can you honestly say that, for millions of dollars, you would not bend the rules? I would not want to answer this question.

Good for you all three of you.  I haven’t had this more fun reading the NYT in years!  There’s more:

Marty in Andover, MA wrote this:

The Olympics once meant something for amateur athletics….but those days, and the amateurs in competition, are long over. I’d rather go running myself.

Now the Games are perverted beyond measure!

Lisa Fremont from East 63rd Street chimed in beautiful words:

The Russian mindset is still waging the Cold War–and this is another ploy in their playbook
I would not be surprised to see the IOCC reverse and allow them in. That body is more motivated by profit, greed, and TV ratings. They threw integrity, honesty, and amateurism under the bus over a decade ago. A chicken can’t change it’s stripes.

Lisa got the IOC exactly right.

Now the 2016 Olympics are officially tainted with the exit of the Russian track and field athletes – the innocent as well as the guilty.  Now more medals for the major powers.  I am about to boycott the Games myself but that will hurt the little nations that do not dope but have no realistic chance due to the pro athlete regime set up for ratings and money.  So my coverage will be as it was in 2012 and 2014 – new countries who have never medalled or gold medalled and non-pro sports like fencing!

Why don’t you do this if you agree:  Contact the USOC HQ and register a polite but forceful protest!  And add this:  NOT ONE DIME for the USOC until they renounce pro athletes and support individual Russian athletes who can show they did not dope in a reasonable amount of time to compete under THEIR flag!  Give the money instead to worthy US hopefuls who do not dope nor are pro athletes.  For example say fencing (See this amazing story on the  openly Muslim fencer for the US!  Is this a great nation or what!) or curling.