Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 25 2016, @10:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the amateurs-doping-like-the-pros dept.

After disclosures of an extensive, state-run doping program in Russia, sports officials have been retesting urine samples from the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics, in Beijing and London. Their findings have resulted in a top-to-bottom rewriting of Olympics history.

More than 75 athletes from those two Olympics have been found, upon further scrutiny, to be guilty of doping violations. A majority are from Russia and other Eastern European countries. At least 40 of them won medals. Disciplinary proceedings are continuing against other athletes, and the numbers are expected to climb.[...]

The drugs were not detected by the Olympic committee's drug-testing lab years ago, during the Games, because the science at the time was not sensitive enough to detect such small residual concentrations,[...]

"This completely rewrote my Olympics story," said Chaunté Lowe, an American high jumper who participated in four Summer Games but had never won a medal.[...]

Accompanying the joy of her belated recognition, she said, was an awareness of the opportunity costs she suffered. In 2008, her husband was laid off. The couple's house in Georgia was foreclosed on that year, something Ms. Lowe said would not have happened had she distinguished herself in Beijing. I was really young and promising at that point, and sponsors were interested in me," said Ms. Lowe, now 32. "A lot of interest goes away when you don't get on that podium."

Should the Olympics require countries to post a bond if their athletes win a medal, so that if they are discovered to have cheated the people most affected can receive compensation?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday November 26 2016, @03:42AM

    by driverless (4770) on Saturday November 26 2016, @03:42AM (#433097)

    Given a drug that guarantees the user a gold medal levels of performance but at a cost of, say, 50% chance of organ failure before the age of 40 there are lots of people who will take that bargain.

    This isn't just hypothetical. There was a survey done some time in the 1990s (after the doping scandals of the 1980s) in which athletes were asked if they'd take a drug that was undetectable, practically guaranteed gold, and would kill them after a certain number of years, something like 5. About a third of them said yes.

    Sorry about the vagueness, I read about this years ago and can't remember all the details.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2