There is one thing that i can guarantee about this summers Olympics, there will be athletes caught taking performance enhancing drugs.
Britain has had its fair share of drug cheats and our Olympic Selection Committee has a hard and fast set of rules stating that if you are convicted of cheating, you are banned for life. Dwain Chambers knew this when he was caught taking a cocktail of anabolic drugs in 2003.
Britain and China are unique in that although they allow their athletes to compete in other competitions once their 2 or 4 year ban expires, they do not allow these athletes to represent them at the Olympics.
In his legal battle to overturn the selection committees decision and win a place on the British team, Chambers cited several examples of other athletes who have recently returned from drug bans to compete at this years Olympics including Ukrainian heptathlete Lyudmila Blonska and the US trio of Kenta Bell, Torri Edward and Damu Cherry but this failed to sway the High Court who upheld the Olympic ban.
Undoubtedly there will be athletes this time around who will slip through the net and win medals due to their ability to mask their cheating and that is up to the International Olympic Committee to stay ahead of the cheats and there attempts at concealing their deception.
Team GB has rightly avoided setting a dangerous precedent by insisting that our fastest 100m runner stays at home kicking his heels. All our athletes know that being banned from the Olympics for life is the consequence of using performance enhancing drugs and if they still take that route and get caught, it is heartwarming to know that we will put doing the right thing above our final position in the medal table.
3 comments:
Lucy,
Sport, even the Oympics, is really entertainment these days. It is associated with a lot money. If enough money is involved the incentive for wealth will be enough for some people to cheat. Water is wet, sky is blue (in Texas), people are greedy enough to cheat.
Q
Very true Q, the sums of money and shot at fame involved are obviously enough of an incentive to risk everything including your own life.
Regardless of what the international body's ruling was... and it was pretty toothless... I'm happy/proud that the British Olympic committee told Dwain where to go. The suspicion that some of the competitors have an unfair advantage over others make a sport like athletics not worth watching.
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