Ok folks, fair enough, I am a NERD, you could not pay me to watch sports events. I tried, but truly, any third rate crime caper is more likely to catch my attention than athletes high on chemicals running faster than their compatriots hundred years ago who were not able to access similarly undetectable hi-tech stuff.I mean, the French Tour de Farce has long ceased to be taken seriously by anyone other than pharma reps trying to sell anabolica to farmers.
Just look at some of the Olympic outcomes...
- 51 gold medals for the PR of China - the Chinese anti-doping folks claim that 99.5% of all athletes were not doped, seems China benefited neatly from this clearly delusional assessment.
- The same Jamaican bloke broke three world records in three days - overall the runners form that island state managed to grab 6 gold medals and nothing much else
- A US American bloke broke 7 world records among his 8 gold medals in 8 days
How likely is it, even if we grant top fitness and - in the case of Chinese athletes a lot of local support - that this happened without pharmaceutical ... ummm ... sponsorship?
Wouldn't it be fairer if the sponsor also received - in retrospect - a medal for concocting chemicals that propelled athletes ahead of the more naturally inclined crowd without the doping tests detecting anything? I think it would be so much fairer to celebrate the chemists, too. Why can't we have a separate competition for chemists supplying drugs to Olympic athletes? I would like to know what makes them faster, so next time I go on a bike trip I can grab some of that juice, too!
I won't event talk much about the civil rights violations committed by China so the world could have its sporting farce. Some of those folks who had a life and their own little houses were made homeless in the process of building those pompous architectural monstrosities conjured up by some architect suffering likely from penis envy or some other inferiority complex. Reportedly many of these people still live under bridges and the like. They will never be able to return to their homes as they have been bulldozed into the ground so doped athletes could have nice shower facilities. But hey, even this pales in comparison to the PR of China's international track record: it supports dictators and mass murderers in Zimbabwe and Sudan, it executed about 10,000 of its own (Chinese) citizens during the last year alone... and I could go on. Still, at least we know now that they're capable of building giant ugly things (no surprise in this really: give an architect a pile of dosh and she will invariably come up with something giant or other - gives em an opportunity to pass by their legacy every other day and say 'I did this - world, admire me!') and conjuring up nice fireworks on the land stolen from those folks now 'housed' under bridges. I still think it's remarkable how happily well-paid engineers and architects rose to the challenge of building giant chunks of concrete and steel on land they knew was stolen from its original owners by a totalitarian regime. No questions asked, as long as the pay is right. Professionalism in action... - Great games. Thank goodness it's over.
And now, go, flame me, I don't care :). I'm just glad these days there's cable and one can choose to watch something else. When I was younger we had the choice between Olympic games and Olympic games on our tellie (chosen by our dad for the rest of the - otherwise bored - family).
