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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?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @04:31AM (#433113)

    I disagree with the logic:

    1. Spectator sports attract cheaters

    2. Drug testing cannot find all cheaters in a timely fashion

    3. Therefore, we must either abolish the sport or legalize that which is currently considered cheating

    By that logic, we should either abolish all tests in high school, college, including both standardized and in-class tests, because there has been and probably always will be incidents of widespread cheating.

    And we should give up trying to protect our computer systems from malware artists because statistics show that we seem to be losing badly.

  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday November 26 2016, @05:06AM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday November 26 2016, @05:06AM (#433122) Journal

    Standardized tests are a problem. Mostly, they test the teacher, at worst, they wreck the curriculum.

    https://bctf.ca/publications/NewsmagArticle.aspx?id=11406 [bctf.ca]
    https://edexcellence.net/articles/bless-the-tests-three-reasons-for-standardized-testing [edexcellence.net]

    Alas, no one has come up with a better model. Many universities have introduced interviews and additional testing for entry into some courses.

    Computer viruses are more like medicine - we need to protect, prevent, and cure, not give up.

    I also didn't say we should give up on drug testing in sport, just that, we can only really give up, or fight harder.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex