Wednesday 31 August 2016

Rio Olympics 2016 and doping stories

Most of the interest for me happened pre the Games of course and the "will they, won't they" allow Russia to compete saga. Not surprisingly during the games my TV and radio interviews weren't about science, but about athletes response to other athletes. The extent of finger pointing was unusual for the Olympics,  but less extreme than has happened at some other events e.g. Paula Radcliffe unfurling her "EPO cheats out" banner at the 2001 World Championship [1]. Still it was the Olympics so news outlets inevitably focussed on incidents such as the finger wagging between Yulia Efimova and Lilly King [2]. Until of course the light relief/black comedy provided by Ryan Lochte and his co-conspirators [3].

The main story in my opinion though was the IPC being brave enough to ban Russia completely from the Paralympics. The world didn't end and the ban was even upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.  This rather put the lie to the IOC's passing of the buck to the national sporting organisations with its ridiculous one week timescale and wilful misreading of the nature of the McLaren WADA report [3].

I didn't get asked much about the IPC decision  though I did try to bring the contrast with the IOC into some of my interviews. Still I am now really looking forward to the Paralympics. Not clean, but cleaner......

[1]  https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2001/aug/10/athletics1

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016-yulia-efimova-and-lilly-king-show-how-swimmings-code-of-honour-is-shot-to-pieces-by-ioc-a7179891.html

[3] http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/08/22/john-oliver-destroys-ryan-lochte-labels-him-americas-idiot-sea-cow/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/04/richard-mclaren-ioc-wada-russia-rio-2016-

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