No Games for you
In a rare burst of nervous energy, the IOC stuck a stick into the hornets’ nest today. They informed one of the world’s largest nations that there would be no place for their team at the Games, come next February. Not even a chance to get dressed up and march in the big parade, much less pick up a new set of gold medals. In case the old ones were tarnished, etc.
The whole “doping” thing gets edgy, every four years. Despite a plethora of measures (pee-pee test, etc), athletes manage to enhance their performance with methods that belie the whole idea of sporting. As one individual put it, “we didn’t know… we were given tea to drink, to help our digestion”. OK. And if that tea made you better at things that are measured with extremely accurate time clocks, it was coincidental.
The response: we’ll appeal the decision and we’ll boycott your competition. In cards, we call that trumping the opposition, although Trump doesn’t “do” Russia… Hang in there. We still have a few weeks to run on this story.
Humour prevails; although this is a Winter Games iteration, any athletes from Russia that do (eventually) compete will do so under the banner of OAR. Not a nautical term: it will refer to “Olympic Athlete from Russia”. Not sure how the acronym plays out in other languages.
I’m saddened. Besides having one of the catchier melodies among anthems, the gang from the Gulag do put on some spectacular shows… on the ice, on the snow, wherever. And the cheering from the opposition (yes, Canada, I’m including you here) is all about added access to medals and not about the purpose of the Games.
