Russia banned from Olympics and World Cup

candylandriots

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Well then...

Russia has been handed a four-year ban from all major sporting events by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).

It means the Russia flag and anthem will not be allowed at events such as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and football's 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

But athletes who can prove they are untainted by the doping scandal will be able to compete under a neutral flag.
They do get to compete in the Euro Championships next year, as St. Petersburg is hosting games. Seems weird to give them an exemption because of that.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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The extent to which UEFA has bent over backwards to accommodate the twelve potential “hosts” for Euro 2020 is pretty crazy. Must be about money somehow. Surprised that Wada plays along.
 

Fred not Lynn

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So you can still play sports you cheated at and stuff, but can’t run a pretty curtain up a pole and play a certain song when you win...
 

Ale Xander

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Hope there are enough quality clean athletes for 2022 Beijing. Always fun to watch them play hockey.

Really sucks for the clean ones as they usually clean up in the Olympics (winter and summer) played in Asia, don't they?
 

candylandriots

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You do have to prove you're clean. So it's not every athlete, but yes.
FWIW, in the sport that I know a lot of athletes in, there are still strong suspicions of athletes who were dirty in Sochi but haven’t been punished.

Edit: that said, given some of the state-enforced doping that was allegedly placed on some Russian athletes, I wonder if WADA made a distinction between athletes who willingly doped, and those who were forced.
 

InstaFace

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Edit: that said, given some of the state-enforced doping that was allegedly placed on some Russian athletes, I wonder if WADA made a distinction between athletes who willingly doped, and those who were forced.
I'm not sure how they'd tell.

But even if they can, the whole point of responding to state-sponsored doping with a punishment at the state level is that, without the various states' cooperation, you can't have clean games to begin with, ever. If an entire country's sport and political authorities make up their mind to cheat, or see no problem with cheating, WADA can't force them to do otherwise (at best, they can discover it - all those holes in the wall from last time, etc). So, yeah, sure, some clean athletes get punished along with the dirty ones. But if they don't take that measure, then every other athlete in the world gets punished, because they can no longer compete on a level playing field without doping, and thus the pressures to engage in a doping program, public or private, ramp up. So the needs of the few need to yield to the needs of the many.
 

InstaFace

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Just let everyone dope.
I take it from this that you don't have kids, or at least, don't plan on having kids who ever play sports.

Just letting global sports actually be a competition between the various shady biochemistry teams employed by countries competing to be the least ethical in how boldly they experiment with the health of the athletes in their charge... yeah, who wouldn't want to live in that world.
 

Ale Xander

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I take it from this that you don't have kids, or at least, don't plan on having kids who ever play sports.

Just letting global sports actually be a competition between the various shady biochemistry teams employed by countries competing to be the least ethical in how boldly they experiment with the health of the athletes in their charge... yeah, who wouldn't want to live in that world.
I have no athletic genes.
 

Ale Xander

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Then punish the biochemistry people, not the athletes that want to hear their anthem or wear their flag. And Russia isn't the only one, yet so far they seem to be the only ones punished.
 

InstaFace

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I don't know why I'm bothering, but: WADA does not have the power to arrest or prevent those people from doing their thing in their native countries. The only point of leverage they have is ensuring that the competition takes place between athletes believed clean to the best of their monitoring abilities. In places like the USA, people like Victor Conte do hard time.

Russia is the only one thus far discovered to have a state-sponsored doping program. If others come up, I expect and hope they'll be treated identically. East Germany ain't walking through that door - and thankfully, too, because they'd be all jacked up.
 

candylandriots

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I'm not sure how they'd tell.

But even if they can, the whole point of responding to state-sponsored doping with a punishment at the state level is that, without the various states' cooperation, you can't have clean games to begin with, ever. If an entire country's sport and political authorities make up their mind to cheat, or see no problem with cheating, WADA can't force them to do otherwise (at best, they can discover it - all those holes in the wall from last time, etc). So, yeah, sure, some clean athletes get punished along with the dirty ones. But if they don't take that measure, then every other athlete in the world gets punished, because they can no longer compete on a level playing field without doping, and thus the pressures to engage in a doping program, public or private, ramp up. So the needs of the few need to yield to the needs of the many.
I don’t disagree with this - I was mostly just speculating on a couple people who other athletes have led me to believe were not clean, but were also not being punished.
 

InstaFace

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I don’t disagree with this - I was mostly just speculating on a couple people who other athletes have led me to believe were not clean, but were also not being punished.
Yeah I don't think we're disagreeing, just trying to underscore that the bigger problem WADA has when state-level actors get involved on the black-hat side is that it's almost impossible to tell who's clean and who isn't, because you can't trust chain-of-custody or any lab, or who got swapped with whom, etc. Maybe the athletes know, or "know", but at a regulatory body level, they kinda only have one option, right?

Still waiting for China . . .
Forcing 10-year-olds who fit the right body profile and test results to move to a state-backed facility and train 24/7 to devote their lives to the greater glory of the country Party isn't against doping rules. Human rights, maybe, but that's not exactly where I'd start with them on that subject...

If they're running a state-sponsored doping program, they're much better at it (and hiding it) than Russia is. They were real good at doping of swimmers in the 80s and 90s, and probably track and field too, but even then they weren't exactly running OpSec worthy of James Bond. Given the lack of real smoke since then, it's entirely possible they decided to clean up their act after the formation of WADA. I'm not gonna say it's the only possible conclusion, but I rather doubt WADA would sit on real evidence of contemporary malfeasance today, given that publicizing it would go a long way towards undermining Russia's allegations of special animus by WADA towards Russia.

(leaving aside that WADA's 38-member governing board has representation from basically every region on earth and it's not a credible whine by Russia to begin with)
 

candylandriots

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Though I think it’s feasible that there are some blind eyes turned China’s way because a) 1.3 billion people is a huge market and b) they did the IOC a solid hosting the 2022 winter games.
 

Marciano490

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I take it from this that you don't have kids, or at least, don't plan on having kids who ever play sports.

Just letting global sports actually be a competition between the various shady biochemistry teams employed by countries competing to be the least ethical in how boldly they experiment with the health of the athletes in their charge... yeah, who wouldn't want to live in that world.
It’s generally pointless to dope during or before puberty. The “think of the children” line doesn’t really apply here. Plus, it’s sport. A lot of them are bad for you regardless of what you put in your body.
 

InstaFace

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It’s generally pointless to dope during or before puberty. The “think of the children” line doesn’t really apply here. Plus, it’s sport. A lot of them are bad for you regardless of what you put in your body.
Kids looking up to pro athletes and later on seeking to emulate them doesn't require immediate action on their part to shoot up. How old were you when you had your first sports hero, or became aware of the olympics? I'm willing to bet it wasn't 18.

The industrialization of sports, and a win-at-all-costs philosophy, is a big part of what's driving kids from sports. And sports are an activity they should do for their own physical and social-emotional development and ongoing mental health. So long as they think they can only please adults by being The Absolute Best, and anything less is unacceptable, they drop out in droves - there are studies on this, from the SFIA and others.

It's not about the doping in itself, it's the message it sends about sports and what's important.

If you're going to take the other side of it, you pretty much need to arrive at an Ale Xander "just let everyone dope, who cares" point of view to be coherent. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you're arguing.

(also, the number of olympic sports that are bad for your body are pretty few and far between. Your archery and gymnastics really aren't doing a lot of damage. Canoeing, cycling, golf... They don't play american football, the martial arts and wrestling prohibit head contact in a way that greatly limits trauma... you're pretty much just talking about hockey and boxing, and maybe rugby sevens, out of ~50 sports).
 

luckiestman

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(also, the number of olympic sports that are bad for your body are pretty few and far between. Your archery and gymnastics really aren't doing a lot of damage. Canoeing, cycling, golf... They don't play american football, the martial arts and wrestling prohibit head contact in a way that greatly limits trauma... you're pretty much just talking about hockey and boxing, and maybe rugby sevens, out of ~50 sports).
that’s not what he is saying. It is not about the particular sport it is about the effort it takes to become elite in almost any sport.
 

InstaFace

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that’s not what he is saying. It is not about the particular sport it is about the effort it takes to become elite in almost any sport.
The effort to become elite in almost any sport is bad for your body? I dunno man. It makes your life pretty monochromatic, you need to have uncommon dedication aside from good athletic genes and the right opportunity presented to you. But how many sports leave broken bodies behind among its formerly-elite?

Swimming
Diving
Archery
Track & Field - I'll give you the hammer throw and such
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball - okay, sure
Boxing - def
Canoeing
Cycling
Equestrian - bad for your wallet maybe
Fencing
Field Hockey
Soccer
Golf
Gymnastics
Handball
Judo
Karate - ribs, wrists, probably nothing long-term
Rowing
Rugby - sure
Sailing
Shooting
Skateboarding
Rock climbing
Surfing - if you're a big-wave pro, okay, yeah
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Tennis - lot of wear and tear on the tour
Triathlon
Volleyball
Weightlifting - I don't know squat, does it?
Wrestling

There's probably a few among that list where he's right, but in the main, I'm not sure I agree. Regardless, the message that doping by elite athletes sends down the food chain to the much larger pool of non-elite players, and the audience watching, I think surely matters.
 

InstaFace

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Russian boxing federation threatens to boycott the 2020 Tokyo olympics if the sanctions are not lifted (i.e. they refuse to compete as O.A.R., which frankly is ridiculous since they had at least 2, arguably 3 top-40 hits and still get plenty of airtime)

[Russian boxing federation head] Umar Kremlev said he has spoken with members of the Olympic boxing team, and they "unanimously" rejected the conditions laid out by the World Anti-Doping Agency as punishment for manipulating doping data.

"They said we won't go without our flag and anthem," Kremlev said. "We aren't going for medals, but for that feeling that I brought the highest honor home for my country."

Separately, the speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament said Russia could create an alternative to the Olympics.

"This ruling show the clear crisis in international sports institutions. I believe that Russia could host its own games at home,'' Valentina Matviyenko said in comments reported by the Interfax news agency.

There is a precedent. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union refused to compete in the Olympics and hosted its own Spartakiad -- named after the ancient rebel slave Spartacus -- with a strong socialist slant. However, the Soviet Union began competing at the Olympics in 1952, and Russians generally take great pride in the country's Olympic achievements since then.
Combining USSR + Russia, they are second all-time in boxing medal count only to the USA. However, they got / are defending only 1 gold from 2016 (Men's Heavyweight, Lishchenko), 0 silvers (Misha Aloian won the silver in Men's Flyweight but - stop me if you've heard this - was later disqualified after testing positive for PEDs), and 3 bronzes. In 2012 they medaled with 1/2/3. Uzbekistan (3/2/2), Kazakhstan (1/2/2) and Cuba (3/0/3) are, frankly, more central to that event than Russia or even the USA (1/1/1).

They ain't bigger than the game. This ain't Brazil boycotting soccer, the Chinese boycotting diving or the USA boycotting basketball. If you ask me, the more Russian federations boycott and refuse to participate as OAR, the better the IOC and WADA look - the whole OAR thing was viewed as something of a farce by both commentators and the viewers I talked about it with.
 
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Marciano490

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Kids looking up to pro athletes and later on seeking to emulate them doesn't require immediate action on their part to shoot up. How old were you when you had your first sports hero, or became aware of the olympics? I'm willing to bet it wasn't 18.

The industrialization of sports, and a win-at-all-costs philosophy, is a big part of what's driving kids from sports. And sports are an activity they should do for their own physical and social-emotional development and ongoing mental health. So long as they think they can only please adults by being The Absolute Best, and anything less is unacceptable, they drop out in droves - there are studies on this, from the SFIA and others.

It's not about the doping in itself, it's the message it sends about sports and what's important.

If you're going to take the other side of it, you pretty much need to arrive at an Ale Xander "just let everyone dope, who cares" point of view to be coherent. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you're arguing.

(also, the number of olympic sports that are bad for your body are pretty few and far between. Your archery and gymnastics really aren't doing a lot of damage. Canoeing, cycling, golf... They don't play american football, the martial arts and wrestling prohibit head contact in a way that greatly limits trauma... you're pretty much just talking about hockey and boxing, and maybe rugby sevens, out of ~50 sports).
Did you mean to say gymnastics here?
 

Marciano490

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I think you're thinking of injuries or damage in a particular sense, and not looking at the overall lifestyle. Like the young phenom Nike runner who basically fucked her whole system up training to run. It's not that running is an inherently dangerous activity. It's that training to be an Olympic runner can be hugely unhealthy.