The Other Side of the Olympics

Parent Cafe
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<p>I didn’t want to rain on the other thread.</p>

<p>I’ve been an Olympics fan since I was a kid and watched coverage in black and white. I used to LOVE the coverage, including the “up close and personal” segments of the pig farmer’s son who went on to win the Luge.</p>

<p>The reason I could hardly care less any more is that all the physically demanding sports are dominated by drugs. I see someone win at swimming or gymnastics or track or weight lifting (etc.) and I just assume that person’s coaches are just better at drug cheating than the teams of the other athletes. Ironically, my favorite Olympic sports now are the ones that require coordination and head-skills, like yachting, team sports, curling, archery, equestrian, fencing, etc. The head-liner sports are full of cheats.</p>

<p>How many athletes mysteriously get “injuries” just before pre-Olympic drug testing? Ironically, this is epidemic among Chinese athletes. The fact that relatively few US athletes are tossed for drug cheating just leads me to believe that American doping programs are more sophisticated.</p>

<p>I can still get excited about the one athlete from Grand Fenwick that made the games, only to come in next-to-last in the 1500 meters final. I would cheer that athlete for getting into the finals, but I will always wonder if the medal winners all cheated.</p>

<p>When it comes to big-money athletics, the age of innocence was over a long time ago, and the headline sports in the Olympics are big money, whether it’s for commercial endorsements and other contracts, or big payments from governments. Or, in the case of the old Soviet Union or the new China, being a government employee as long as you win.</p>

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<p>I can’t disagree with you. We’ve already seem one American swimmer disqualified since the trials for failing a drug test. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a very sophisticated method involved and she was just unlucky. I can put it aside though and still enjoy watching the games. I’m a baseball fan too.</p>

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<p>When the USA started sending our professional athletes was the moment the Olympics jumped the shark for me.</p>

<p>I know the Russians, Chinese and East Germans had people whose sole ‘job’ was being athletes. And if we could beat them with an ‘amateur’, it made it all the sweeter (think 1980 Ice Hockey)</p>

<p>As far as drugs and sports, don’t stop with the Olympics. I personally think many many many of athletes of today are ‘enhanced’, starting in HS, thru college and into the big leagues.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t care if another NFL or Baseball game was ever played.<br>
WAY to much money and importance and attention placed on these people</p>

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<p>I have never liked any sport where “judging” was required. They always seemed fixed. The sports I liked track and field , swimming, weight lifting etc it now appears that when you win it opens a Pandora Box of questions- can you prove you did not use performance enhancing drugs?</p>

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<p>I took my family to the Torino Winter Games in 06. Saw lots of the best / big name sports while we were there, to include Apollo Ohno’s 500M win, Ladies figure skating, and the US vs. Russia hockey match. </p>

<p>But you know what my favorite “Olympic sports” moment was during those games? Well, my family and I went to the ski arial trials (you know, they go down the hill, hit a ramp, and spin and twist a gazzilion times unitl you are convinced they are going to land on their heads, and somehow they land on their feet, without their knees exploding from the impact!). Lots of great athletes (at least in Gen-X terms), with each getting to two trial jumps. As expected, the medal favorites performed some AMAZING stunts, pumped their fists in the air, and ski’d down to the end of the slope to recieve their adulation from the rockin’ crowd. A lot of jockeying for position for the finals for next day, and even a few upsets.</p>

<p>Then came the guy from Argentina (or Brazil, or Belize, or some other South American country; I can’t really recall the exact one). The announcer’s tell his story: 40 (ish) guy, took up the sport a couple of years ago, decided he would love to represent his country, BARELY allowed to compete. His turn comes up: He goes down the hill, hits the ramp, does a backflip or some other easy trick (I say that only in comparison to what everyone else was doing, heaven knows I could never do it), lands on his feet, proceed to fall flat on his back with his skies flying away, and slides the rest of the way down the hill. </p>

<p>And you know what? He gets up, and starts jumping up and down in pure joy, pumping his fists in the air to the crowd, obviously in pure joy that he just represented his country in the Olympics. And the crowd LOVES IT! He gets the rocking-est, loudest, most heart felt cheers from the entire crowd, who are all on their feet for him. Some of the other athletes retrieve his mis-placed skies and bring them to him, hugging him and smiling for him. And he continues to wave to th ecrowd the whole time he leaves the hill, tears streaming down his face in pure joy. </p>

<p>I turn to my youngest (12 at the time) and say, “THAT is what the Olympics is all about.”</p>

<p>Kobe and the Dream Team will win their gold medals, put them in some trophy case in their million dollar house somewhere, and maybe even look at them once in a while. Bu they will never understand what the Olypmics SHOULD be about. A shame it has turned into this…</p>

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<p>Great post Bullet. Yeah, the drugs are such a stain on the whole thing. I, too, like the equestrian events. They are my most favorite, and they get too little time on air, but I guess I feel that way cause I like it so much. Our paper today has a list of everyone from our state who is in Beijing, and what sport they’re in. They interviewed a young woman on the local radio last week before she left. She just graduated college and was so excited. She sounded so young and fresh; I just hope she is “running clean”, esplly as she is running!</p>

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<p>And Bob Costas is no Jim McKay</p>

<p>[Grateful</a> Lithuania](<a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/sf/deadshirts.html]Grateful”>http://www.sfgate.com/sf/deadshirts.html)
now that’s a cool uniform. The Grateful Dead sponsoring the Lithuanian basketball team, 1992 was the first year for professionals in the Olympics [1992</a> Olympic Basketball](<a href=“http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/basket_1992/]1992”>1992 Olympic Basketball). Hm, looks like Lithuania came in 3rd :-)</p>

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<p>I think they should let them use as many drugs as they want. And then, if there is a market, set up a “drug free” Olympics as well, rather like the para-Olympics.</p>

<p>I don’t know if drugs have hit competitive yoga yet, or synchronized swimming. </p>

<p>I also think they should have swimming and, especially, diving, by weight class.</p>

<p>(And why do they have to compete by country? The U.S. athletes now look like Abbie Hoffman, all draped in American flags.)</p>

<p>(These only so many hours of beach volleyball one can watch without turning Maoist.)</p>

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<p>Haha, you guys are too funny. I agree w/ Sue, the Olympics truly jumped the shark when they started allowing these multi-gazillionaire (and even bigger egoed) pros on the basketball team. I was really incensed the other night during the Opening when they said how there was one pro ball player from America that is representing Germany bc “his great great grandparents were from Germany and that is good enough for them”. What? The Olympics have become too commercialized. </p>

<p>I am, however, enjoying the story of the alternates for the US Men’s Gymnastics team. I TRULY HOPE these guys become the rock stars of this Olympics. Or how about Lopez Lomong, Lost Boy of Sudan turned US Olympian (just found out the other day that he ran his first American foot race past my house 2 weeks after being adopted into an American family)? And Michael Phelps? How could you not be rooting for this guy to break Mark Spitz’s record? Every interview I have seen of him he seems so humble and his own toughest critic. And Dara Torres? Wow, what an example she is to today’s youth as to what “old” means to them. These are things, as a previous poster said, that still make the Olympics captivating to watch.</p>

<p>Oh, and I also enjoy the more obscure sports. Watching Field Hockey now and my D and I are dying for the Badminton and Table Tennis to be televised.</p>

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<p>Funny, I can’t watch them. The reception on my Turkish and Greek channels over an antenna is very bad, my satellite is free and I watch MBC which is pretty good for being free. I don’t purchase any package, no cable, therefore no olympics. Pity. I can’t watch NBColympics.com. I don’t live in the U.S.A. It is all big business. Money and rules. On that note, I will miss nothing.</p>

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<p>Overseas, we were overseas during the last Olympics and were like you - we didn’t pay for TV (why pay for something we can’t understand?) so couldn’t watch anything. I thought I could watch on the Internet, then I found out that the American broadcasting was limited by contract to the US, so it was blocked for anyone overseas. The Germans don’t have near the coverage it gets in the US, so on their website, they had a daily blog and a couple pictures.</p>

<p>But unlike you, I minded missing it. </p>

<p>(Now, when the World Cup was on, we had no trouble getting invites to other people’s houses to watch!)</p>

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<p>Ah, I love the World Cup! Probably because I have access to it and have for years…the olympics is a distant memory…</p>

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<p>From an article in the* Baltimore Sun<a href=“%5Burl%5Dhttp://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/ideas/bal-id.doping10aug10,0,440607.story”>/I</a>:</p>

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<p>Anyone watching the men’s gymnastics doubt that some countries (<em>cough</em> China <em>cough</em>) are enthusiastic dopers? </p>

<p>(OK, it’s probably all the men’s gymnasts. I just happened to be watching a segment where the Chinese men are on the rings. I’m thinking, yeah, those are designer muscles.)</p>

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<p>S said that during one of the previous Olympics (he thinks it was Salt Lake City) one of the athletes tested positive for marijuana. They were going to take his medal away from him, until he pointed out that marijuana wasn’t on the list of banned drugs. So he got to keep his medal. I think he was a snowboarder or something.</p>

<p>I don’t really see how pot could improve an athlete’s performance, but perhaps if the judges were happily stoned they could have given him a higher score, ha ha!</p>

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<p>Now there’s an idea. Do they do drug testing of the judges? It could explain a few things in past events.</p>

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<p>There are serious questions about the Chinese women’s gymnastics team. Gymnasts have to be at least 16 years old, but the Chinese look much, much younger. Maybe they’ve just taken drugs to delay puberty?
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/sports/olympics/10age.html?_r=1&ref=sports&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/sports/olympics/10age.html?_r=1&ref=sports&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>lafalum, that was Canadian Ross Rebigliati, at Nagano. The IOC stripped him of his gold medal, initially, but an arbitration panel wisely overturned that decision.</p>

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<p>Marijuana was then and still is on the list of banned drugs. What the arbitrators ruled was that his use of the dope had not been “performance enhancing.” You can see official list of banned drug here:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/2008_List_En.pdf[/url]”>http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/2008_List_En.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I would like to kow why so many female American gymnasts appear to have their growth stunted.</p>

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<p>zoosermom, I would also. They are so tiny compared to other girls their age. Shawn Johnson is 4"8 and 90 pounds and is 16 years old. Nastia is the “tallest” on the team at 5"3.</p>