Russian gymnasts

[minx]

The European gymnastics union said that it will not allow Russian or Belarusian gymnasts to compete in any sanctioned events, regardless of whether they march in with a blank flag or not.

While I do feel sorry for the individual athletes, it's about damn time!  Russian sports have been able to hide all sorts of abusive shit under the banner of 'but the athletes!'

Meanwhile you have 14 year old kids being pushed beyond physical limits because they've been doped up, but it's okay because if they manage to reach the podium they won't hear their country's anthem - so sad.

Does anything think that Putin or the athletics foundations of Russia give a crap about that - EVERY network identifies these athletes as Russians competing under the IOC banner.  And they go out of their way to mention that the Russian anthem won't be played for them.

They were sanctioned for a reason, and I feel terrible for the athletes who won't be able to compete because of it.  But enough is enough.

I might feel differently if all the commentators hadn't played up that these athletes were Russian - just matter of factly saying that they were competing under the IOC banner with no other explanation.  And if they had mentioned that Russia was not allowed to officially compete due to sanctions regarding corruption in their drug testing program, rather than playing down why they were banned from competing under their own flag.

Maybe that would serve as an example to other countries too - play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

First I've heard about it to be honest. My first thought is of the athletes, of course, that are usually very young people whose lives have been spent training for those competitions. For naught.

On the other hand if it were purely a principled decision, then there wouldn't be half as many competitor nations as there are in any world-wide event.

[minx]

Truth.

But I feel that if the IOC is going to hand down a multi-year suspension for drug test corruption, then it should have some teeth to it. Which would mean that the athletes who have trained their entire lives for that one moment and have done things by the book get screwed. Otherwise, why bother?

And I'd say that for any nation, including the US. I'd also say that the Olympics are nothing but a joke anymore though. Huge costs to the home country and cities, with almost no economic return (remember that one of Mitten's largest achievements was that the SLC winter games broke even and didn't actually lose money, which almost no other nation had pulled off). Lots and lots of corruption and abuse with no real oversight.