<p>By request, if anybody wants to discuss cheating at the Olympics, and whether there is a double standard for US vs. Chinese athletes in this respect, here’s a thread for it.</p>
<p>Personally, I am disgusted by all cheating, but I am particularly disgusted by state-sponsored cheating, and that’s what I think has happened in the past with athletes from a number of nations, including China and East Germany. I’m unaware of any evidence of this with respect to the US.</p>
<p>Unless you count University sponsored athletes in the US,there are no state sponsored athletes in the US, so there is no state sponsored cheating. But I honestly do not think that US athletes are now or in the past are “100% clean”. I enjoy watching the games but still I don’t get worked up enough by athletics to register “disgust”.</p>
<p>I think it’s very unfortunate when a government chooses to get involved in sport doping. But from the point of the view of the athletes I see very little difference between the state-sponsored doping of the old Soviets, East Germans, & current Chinese government and the high-tech, underground doping common in the US (think BALCO and Marion Jones) and Europe. Both have a lot of money and fancy technology behind them.</p>
<p>I was and to some degree still am a big track and field fan. But unfortunately the sport has a disgraceful history of being drenched in drugs. For years I defended the US athletes against the accusations of the cynical Europeans. I knew there was some US doping. An American would occasionally test positive, but I regarded US athletes as being relatively clean. I thought any US doping was small-time, amateur stuff. Not big and organized like in the evil Communist countries.</p>
<p>Then the whole BALCO scandal blew up, and it turned out that the European cynics had been right all along. Doping in US track was huge, pervasive, well-organized, and well-funded. I also long ago learned that never having tested positive is meaningless. Many cheaters who later openly admitted their doping never tested positive either.</p>
<p>It’s funny but not surprising that everyone thinks their own Olympic heroes are clean but their opponents must be doped. This is where the double standard originates. Carl Lewis’s big rival in the early 90s was the British sprinter Linford Christie. All the Brits were convinced that Lewis was a cheating doper but their man Christie was clean. For the Americans it was the other way around. That’s why you see some Americans now thinking the Chinese and maybe the Lithuanian girls must be doped but would never dream of thinking the same of Missy Franklin. “No! Not our innocent, fresh-faced Missy Franklin! She’s a sweetheart She’s only 17. Impossible!”</p>
<p>I still follow track but not with the enthusiasm I had before. I no longer spend my vacations flying to the track world championships as I did back in in the 80s and 90s. I no longer read track websites. I still subscribe to Track and Field News but now maybe lightly thumbing through it and looking at the pictures instead of devouring every detail.</p>
<p>So is the young Chinese phenom swimmer clean or doped? I don’t know. Is Missy Franklin? Did Michael Phelps win 8 gold medals in Beijing with the aid of dope or not? I don’t know. But I’ve sure learned that all too often not all is as it seems in big time Olympic sports.</p>
<p>I’m still an optimist. But I’ve become a prayerful optimist. So when dazzling new star does something marvelous, say Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt, or even Missy Franklin, I think to myself “Please Lord, please let them be clean. Oh please let this not be another phony cheater and liar. Please.”</p>
<p>I think there is a material difference between state sponsored doping/cheating like we see from the Chinese and doping/cheating done by individuals athletes. A government should not be held accountable for individual doping/cheating because they cannot control it. China should be held accountable because they are part of the problem.</p>
<p>I too would like to think that the US Athletes are clean, but I know some of them are not. I think the issue with the Chinese swimmer is the almost impossible time she shaved AND that she swam faster than the top male athlete in that same sport. Swimmers like Missy and Michael have at least been consistent with their improvement and success. This Chinese swimmer has never even placed at a world event and then to fire off a world record by that much time is very suspect. Same with the Chinese gymnasts 4 years ago that still had baby teeth, but were all “over” 16 years old?? I think part of Michael Phelp’s success are his abnormally long arms.</p>
<p>“China should be held accountable”.</p>
<p>What does that mean? After all, it’s a big country.</p>
<p>Should the USPS be “held accountable” for all the past doping in their sponsored pro cycling teams ? Just curious.</p>
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Good question. What would the IOC do if it obtained strong evidence of state-sponsored cheating? They’d be in an embarassing situation.</p>
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<p>Yeah, I used to think so too. Until it turned out that doping in the US wasn’t being done just by individuals. It was, and probably still is, supported and promoted by companies, training clubs, organizations, and extensive networks that reached a lot of people. The BALCO thing wasn’t just Marion Jones and her personal chemist whipping up a batch of dope in her garage and injecting it. It was much, much bigger than that:</p>
<p>[BALCO</a> Scandal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BALCO_Scandal]BALCO”>BALCO scandal - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>The only real difference is that in addition to the athletes, trainers, coaches, sponsors, and athletic officials being liars and cheaters, in the cases of state-sponsored doping the governments are too. Down on the playing field the difference is minimal.</p>
<p>While I wholeheartedly agree that cheating of various types can occur ANYWHERE, including the USA, I am much more disgusted by state-sponsored cheating. Not only is it harder to catch (since there is state-support for it, a la the eternal question of the Chinese birth certificates), but it is more often done without the desire or even knowledge of the athletes. While Franklin could be doping it is likely at least her own choice, while Ye Shiwen is much more likely to be being doped without her consent - and yes, I consider that worse.</p>
<p>I think what it means is when an athlete representing their country, say USA or France, is found guilty of doping sanctions are levied against that athlete. When you find that an athlete(s) has been doped by their government as part of their training in a government sponsored program then perhaps it is reasonable to think about sanctions for that country in that sport.</p>
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While I agree that the competitive differences are the same, the moral difference is pretty big.</p>
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<p>I’ll tell you what they’d do: absolutely nothing. That’s exactly what they did when the Berlin wall fell and East Germany fell apart. The STASI files revealed the huge extent of the Official East German doping effort. </p>
<p>There were some real eye-openers in there. For example there was a letter in the files from Olympic gold medalist Marita Koch complaining to officials that her teammate, Barbel Woekel, whose father had connections to the sport ministry, was getting supplied with more and better dope than she was. </p>
<p>What did the IOC or anybody else do about this letter? Nothing. Marita Koch holds the world record in the women’s 400 meters to this day.</p>
<p>I thought I heard that North Korea is facing exclusion from future competition due to steroid use by its athletes, and had obtained a one-time exemption for these Olympics.</p>
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<p>For the governments, yes. For the athletes there is no moral difference.</p>
<p>Yeah, I believe the vast majority of US swimmers are clean. However, I don’t think the same thing about our Track and Field athletes. </p>
<p>The sudden rise of the Chinese again, has raised eyebrows based upon past and present acts.</p>
<p>I haven’t followed a lot of the Olympics this year, but I just wanted to add my distaste for some countries that consistly try to break rules for their gain. China, in particular, comes to mind. I can’t forget how they tried to fudge the birthdates of their gymnasts 4 years ago. Deplorable. Athletes from the US don’t quite fit under that same umbrella b/c they’re individually motivated.</p>
<p>That said, I thought it was sad that one female athlete, a runner, was considered suspiciously male. And now the Chinese swimmer, Ye, is under the glare: geez. Imagine if she and Phelps had kids, how awkward looking they’d be, with super large hands and long wingspan arms? lol</p>
<p>Conversely, and why I came onto this thread: what do you all think of that Fencing mess? How unfair for the Korean woman who won, but the clock got stuck!!! What’s with the IOC? Looks to me they need to get their act together and play by the same rules as everywhere else.</p>
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<p>And the male cyclists-- forget it. They all dope, that’s my opinion.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I am under the assumption that all cyclists are doping.</p>
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<p>I think you might be referring to Caster Semenya, who is South African not Chinese.</p>
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<p>The Chinese government needs to employ some statisticians to determine how much “improvement” per year can be chemically induced without falling outside 2 standard deviations…</p>