Olymnpic Swimmer Fingers A Cheat

Drugged athletes is a topic of note again, this time at the Rio Olympics. That's largely because the International Olympic Committee and other International organizations who are supposed to police drug cheaters don't do a particularly convincing job of banning them. Russia's Olympic team was partially banned this year, an improvement after evidence showed that the Russian government itself instituted and ran the drug cheating program for it's team's athletes. But many of the cheaters were reinstituted after ridiculous appeals allowed them back into the competition.

Surely, the pressure from the big bear Russian government made the ban dissipate, making for pathetic situations where drug cheats with recent failed drug tests compete side by side with athletes with no such drug usage background. When the cheats win, rancor increases and some fans demand the International regulators do the job they are supposed to and ban all athletes who record a positive drug test. The good news is that some athletes are also now speaking out against the cheaters.

Nineteen year old swimming star Lilly King is one who is leading the charge. She loudly challenged the fitness of allowing Russian cheater Yulia Efmova, who, just hours before her comptetition with King, was mysteriously reinstated to the Rio Olympics despite being a two time confirmed drug cheat. There is justice though,  because King stared down the Russian, denounced her presence in the competiton and then and defeated her, wining the gold medal while the tearful Efmova was booed by the crowd in finishing second in the 100 meter breaststroke event.
After the race King took her crusade against doping to a new level by insisting that American athletes previously banned for drug offenses should also have been kicked off the United States team.

 King is making the case, and I agree, that any athlete who has a failed drug test should be automatically kicked out of the Olympics. No more should an athlete claim "they made me do it" in response to state run cheating programs like the ones the Russian government has long operated. the "everyone does it" defense has also long since been shown to be a false one.

When asked if U.S. athletes who have fallen foul of the drug testers, such as sprinters Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay, deserved to be in Rio, King, 19, she told it like it is. "I have to respect the track authorities' decision even if it is something I don't necessarily agree with," King said. "But do I think people who have been caught doping should be on the team? They shouldn't. It is unfortunate we have to see that. It is just something that needs to be set in stone that this is what we are going to do. Let's settle this and be done with it. There should not be any bouncing back and forwards."

Sadly, international sports events are showpieces for dictatorships like China and Russia, who lag behind in real life success for their citizens. They pump up athletes and organize expensive athletic programs backed with steroids and other drug enhancing aids in order to boast the pathetic 60's communist mantra that " our system is better because we win the most medals". No one believes it, especially not the cheating nations, but state wide cheating continues anyway and the competition is tainted by the advantages the cheaters have.

Individual cheats are just as common as state cheats and are found among all nations. That is harder to detect (there is less often as smoking gun showing the cheating) than government run drug aid programs, but enforcement of cheating by individual athletes is also enforced inconsistently. Maybe King's statements about ending cheating can be a start in enforcing the drug ban rules. Out of the mouths of babes does come wisdom. Will other clean athletes echo King's complaints? A completely clean Olympics is likely an impossibility, bit a completely honest attempt by the sports organizers to stop it is not.  Should we expect and accept anything less?