Be Excellent To Each Other

Good.

Oh, a link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olympic ... 503792.stm

Fair enough. They gave him a lifetime ban, they've enforced the lifetime ban.

I heard somewhere that the UK is the only country that has this rule. In any other country he would be allowed to compete.

Malc

Cant say any more than this, echoing Mimi:

GOOD.

The crunt.

Hoorah for the English courts. He's a cheating barsteward - he knew the rules when he decided to cheat, so he can't now start bleating about it and expect to get a sympathetic hearing. The cheating (!).

Drugs cheats should be banned for life, as long as they are indeed drugs cheats, and not just some poor sod who mistakenly used 'Acme Cold Cure +' (banned) instead of 'Acme Cold Cure Extra' (legal).

It's fine by me that we enforce the standards, even if we are the only ones.

I know some US athletes have been given lifetime bans, though, so does that not mean 'lifetime ban' in their case?

How do people feel about Linford Christie's lifetime ban? He was angry at not being able to carry the torch relay (Ken Livingstone offered him the role, then the IOC, who had not been consulted, led a campaign to have this honour withdrawn). I agree and don't think anyone who has been banned for life over drugs should be allowed to partake in such honours, though to be offered the role and have it withdrawn because people can't sort themselves out is a bit tight... but Christie has also kicked up a fuss that he hasn't been given an honour by the Queen, whereas Coe has (someone of who Christie is very cutting and critical). Someone suggested to me that Linford's ban came at the end of his career, when he was technically retired, but I don't think that really matters to me. Take performance enhancing drugs in sport and you are a cheat, fair and supersquare.

I'm going to piss you all off by disagreeing with you, I think it's unfortunate he wasn't allowed in.

He was banned for 2 years in 2003, which he has served and then some. It's kind of like letting someone out of prison but then never allowing them to get a job, no matter how skilled they are, because they were a bit of a stupid cunt once. He looks pretty clean now, and remains a pretty good athlete, so I think the decision not to allow him to compete is more political than it is a strict adherance to the term 'lifetime ban'.

Given our olympic team usually suck monkey balls, it's strange that we'd cut off our nose to spite our face. There are loads of champion athletes out there who we doubtlessly revere, and doubtlessly many of them also took drugs during their careers but had the good fortune not to be caught. I can't see how that makes them any better, really.

I do wonder whether Linford's positive test was as a result of deliberate cheating, though. As he said himself, he was pretty-much retired from the sport and was only running as a favour to the organisers (IIRC). Why would he want to have taken drugs? What had he got to gain? He certainly had lots to lose...

The 2 year ban was for competitive athletics entirely. The lifetime "ban" is re being allowed onto our Olympics team.

It's entirely fair that the UK Olympics team should have a say over who gets on it. They've got a rule, and they enforce it. And he knew about it when he decided to be a big cheating scumbag.

He can, and does, run competitively for prize money, so it's not the same as not letting released prisoners get jobs. He just isn't allowed to go off and represent our country in the Olympics.

Maybe they should run some sort of "drugged up games" in parallel. Then, all these athletes who've been banned would have somewhere to compete, and you'd get to see what effect the drugs have, and perhaps occasional on-track head explosions and everything.

Given the role that sport plays in encouraging youngsters, I'd have said it was better to have a poor national showing at the olympics than to have a good, tarnished, national showing.

Kevin Mitnick isn't allowed to work with computers.
Nick Leeson isn't allowed to work in any financially regulated occupation.

So we never allow people second chances anymore?

Man I'm usually the one that says KILL NOW and everyone else expresses a more moderate view. How odd.

Ye, I was just posting exactly the same as Mr Chris, really.

Also, the relay team of which he was part had their medals stripped because of HIS drug-taking - he lost other people their medals, not only his own.

He had a lifetime ban from the Olympics, so as far as I can see this conclusion is the only logical one.

Kalmar's version of the games sounds fun!

Comcal - if you know that you will get banned from the olympics for life for taking drugs and still make that choice then yeah, you forfeit all second chances as far as that competition goes.

Kalmar, that would be awesome.

But rather than steroids and performance enhancing drugs we should have events like Psychedelic freestyle swimming, the 100m snort and Smack diving.

Christie's drug failure was an odd one, though. It was some years after he retired from professional running and had become a trainer. I would agree with his complaints that he has been treated unfairly in the public eye compared to Seb Coe. But then Coe is as Establishment as they come and both Coe and Christie pale into insignificance compared to the great Daley Thompson who was recently missed off a line of commemorative stamps in favour of Sally Gunnell and Duncan Goodhew.

I believe Britain is the only country to have this Olympics ban because we actually take drug cheats seriously. The Americans regard it just as much of an occupational hazard as China and the old Eastern Bloc countries.

At some point athletics will have to come to a halt anyway, as we will have come to the maximum distances, minimum times etc possible by an unaugmented human being. The 100m times can't keep reducing for ever, otherwise they'd eventually be finishing instantaneously.

Except he'd be cheating still, he's simply maintaining a body built by cheating, which is much easier.



No if during that 2nd chance they have a massive advantage because of their crime no.

The Olympics is meant to be the height of sportsmanship and fairplay and all that stuff. You knowingly break the rules, I think it's fair to stick by them and not let you in.

I'm all for Kalmar's games version. Give people the chance to experiment with what drugs and surgery and stuff can do, and within 20 years we'd have 8 foot tall vat-born athletes running the 100m in 4 secs, and then dying on the podium as all four of their baboons hearts explode at once.

What about PAEDOFIDDLER FILF? Should we allow them to work in schools if they promise to be good?

Made me chuckle mightily, and I needed it

Also - DC can still compete in athletics, he just isn't allowed the ultimate honour of representing his country at the olympics.

I think we should replace the Olympics with that X Games thing - stuff like Underwater Shotput, the Falling Down Competition, the Slide Along a Slippy Floor As Far As You Can Race, and the 100m Run Round a Short Circle



Yes. I said that.

He's the CEO for an Irish football club. They turn a profit, too.

They're not regulated by the FSA or equivalent body though, which is what I meant.

Plus, someone would notice if he kept buying greatly overvalued players.

Oh.

And given the backgrounds of some other team owners, he's small time.

So why is using performance enhancing drugs cheating, anyway?

/edit hold on - they let him do the trials (in which he was best) and kept a space open for him in case he won the case? FFS...

Because you go menkle and kill your family.

Because it screws up the athlete's health. You might argue it's their own choice what to do with their bodies, but if drugs were permitted, it would be impossible for a clean athlete to compete. So if one person chooses to use drugs, the rest of the field have no choice at all.

They legally had to do that.

And it's cheating because they say it is, and it's their sport.

At one point a certain level of caffine in your blood was considered cheating.

I think that was up until fairly recently too.

Malc

ooh it still is:



Malc

Check out @SkyNewsBreak’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status ... 8138988544

The Court of Arbitration for Sport reject appeal from athlete Caster Semenya to overturn proposed eligibility rules from athletics' governing body the IAAF for female athletes with naturally-occurring high levels of testosterone to either take medication or compete against men

— Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) May 1, 2019

This is complicated..

Surely there are loads of people who have excelled in sports at least in part due to some quirk of their physiology. I agree that it's tricky but that seems really unfair.

"Being tall"
"Being born in September"

If she's born with a naturally occurring advantage then I don't see why it is any different to an athlete with any other kind of physical advantage in, for example, height, weight or muscle mass. Should, then, people with lower level of testosterone be given more to enable them to compete to the same advantage?

Has not Semenya been through all of the hoops and jumps and had it confirmed by the IAC that she is, incontestably, female? She has a natural physical advantage. The same as many top athletes. Can't start giving shortening powders to naturally tall basketball players.

Also, my heart says this should be in the thread about Dwayne Chambers, really, because these are mightily different circumstances.

Well good news! It is in that thread!

D’oh

I guess it depends on how common this condition is. It could lead to a scenario where all the top female athletes were selected and trained based on their natural testosterone levels and all the other girls had fuck all chance to get good enough just by training hard. I think that would be shit. With elite sport being the massive pile of bollocks that it is where governments pay money for medals then that's what would happen. And basketball is just one sport, this would confer an advantage in every sport where men are typically better than women. I was probably never going to be a baller but I also never felt like I couldn't have had a stab at something except for my lack of commitment.

But if she's like a one in a million then I think let her race and the rest will just have to suck it up.

The thing that angers me the most about this is the huge number of stories that run this into a transgender women in sport article, which for a start confuses two seperate things entirely, but then always runs into some slurry-for-brains commentator saying that it will simply lead to men nominating themselves as women and women will be pushed out of all sport, altogether, somehow suggesting that this is what has happened in this instance. Why do so many articles talk about Semenya and transgender athletes in the same breath?

How are they going to determine if a woman has ‘unusually high’ testosterone levels where no outwardly suggesting physical characteristics are present? Are they now going to measure the testosterone levels of all women athletes and set a car which your level must fall beneath otherwise you get a call to say they you must medicate to compete in these events. And if they do it for some events and sports there’s no way it won’t creep to all others.

I think it's one of the things they already test for because someone could use testosterone to cheat.

So this must be either the first time someone with high testosterone has it naturally or others have been banned, I guess? I wonder if men have a maximum natural limit they must compete beneath?

My current understanding is that the testosterone level is being used as a very crude way to determine who is classed as make or female for the purposes of even competition. I don't think there is an upper limit for testosterone in males, but a sudden elevated level will raise eyebrows. (See below)

If memory serves, there are/were a couple of teenage male to female college athletes in the states (possibly Connecticut) who were winning by huge margins and this was causing some upset and rules being rewritten.

I think athletics uses a biological passport which basically is used to look for changes in levels of stuff to point towards cheating, as changes in these levels can be attributed to being Very Naughty Indeed. Cycling certainly does. Pictured isn't a passport but the results of the Greatest Ever Cyclist Who Was Very Naughty But Had Style And Panache Unlike The Very Naughty American So He Is Forgiven at three points in time which got him in some bother. The biological passport is a bit similar.

Very controversial in the world staring championships.

You have a lovely knee, Malia.

And another, not so attractive?