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from the [when]-will-the-pendulum-swing-back? dept.
A newly released World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report has found that the scale of Russian doping at the 2012 London and 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, as well as other events such as the 2013 World Championships in Athletics, was much larger than previously thought:
International sports's antidoping watchdog on Friday laid out mountainous evidence that for years Russian officials orchestrated a doping program at the Olympics and other competitions that involved or benefited 1,000 athletes in 30 sports. The findings intensified pressure on the International Olympic Committee to revisit Russia's standings at the 2014 Winter Games and penalize the nation ahead of the 2018 edition.
The evidence, published by the World Anti-Doping Agency, was the coda to a set of investigations conducted by the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, who issued a damning report in July that prompted more than 100 Russian athletes to be barred from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The follow-up report outlined competitions that had been tainted by years of extraordinary preparations, ensuring Russia's dominance at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, the 2013 track and field world championships in Moscow and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, the "apex" of Russia's cheating at which it took advantage of controlling drug-testing.
The subterfuge included using table salt and Nescafé instant coffee granules to conceal tainted urine, the report said. Some samples were clearly fraudulent: Urine provided by two female hockey players at the Sochi Games contained male DNA. Yet Mr. McLaren suggested that the full extent of the cheating might never be known. "It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes," he said Friday, calling the "immutable facts" of his report clear but far from comprehensive. "For years, international sports competitions have unknowingly been hijacked by the Russians."
WADA report (151 pages) and statement. More documents available here. Also at USA Today (opinion column):
The only way to restore integrity to the Olympic movement is with a testing agency that is not beholden to the International Olympic Committee or its sports federations. Require the respective Olympic committees to sign on, agreeing to uninhibited and unannounced out-of-competition testing. Insist that the sports federations cede responsibility for sanctions.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Saturday December 10 2016, @04:57PM
So, let's say we agree to determine a global age of consent for this, then limit competition to those who have consented only. At what point does peer pressure *really* become a non-issue, keeping in mind that it is going to come with the potential of large amounts of fame and money to sweeten the deal? Many people are not really fully mentally mature until they are much older than typical ages of consent/majority, and you could even argue that some never really get there. You'd have to start doping at some point to make it effective, but the clock is ticking all the time on when the athlete is just going to be physically past it, so you're automatically into diminishing returns - leave it too late to start doping and there's no point, start too soon and you could argue the athelete wasn't really mature enough to fully understand the implications.
You've also got the legal and moral minefield to contend with. Some countries are going to be able to abuse the hell out of their athletes with all sorts of dubious drugs, whereas others that might allow some doping will still be so severely limited in the drugs they could use by the legal and moral issues surrounding them it's likely they would not be able to effectively compete. That's going to mean the field is so uneven that any notion of fair competition is going to be largely moot, so unless you can also figure some kind of weighting system like they use in the Paralympics (and good luck with that, given how many different drugs are likely be tried and then abandonned), then what's the point?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!