see url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/sports/olympics/ioc-russia-winter-olympics.html
Excellent outcome from the International Olympics Committee. Now, if the
Committee could just extend this ruling to every other nation state and
country which participates in the Olympic Games and only allow athletes
to participate on their individual merits, rather than as
representatives of their nation states...that would be a fine thing. It
would return the Olympic Games to what it was always about. Individual
contests between athletes based on their physical and mental powers,
based on equal opportunities on the track. There would be no need for
the vast amounts of money spent by many nation states on researching and
practising circumventing, subverting and undermining those more honest
athletes who try to achieve their best through mental, physical training
and education processes.
As it is an amateur sport, there is nothing wrong with obtaining
sponsorship from wherever and whatever and whomever in the world to
support their individual training, education and abilities. If the
Olympic Games was taken out of the contest between nation states for
supremacy based on individual competition, then it might get somewhere.
At the moment it is a contest between the chemists, the politicians and
big business, who try to screw as much profit and greed and political
kudos as they can for their own purposes.
If the Olympic Anthem was the only piece of music played on behalf of
the winner of a Gold Medal, in my view, that would be a much better and
less controversial way of rewarding the individual, and prevent this
inane quest for supremacy by nation states and countries who should know
better. Let the nation states compete with each other in other ways for
the kudos of their politicians...
ATB
Dougie.
