(Untitled)

[fpb]

The loud American complaints about Chinese cheating in the Olympics would sound better if the US athletics establshment had not been a sink of doped iniquity for decades, leading to horrors such as the "flo-jo" so-called world record, which is still on the books, and finally to the disgrace and humiliation of Marion Jones and her contemporaries.

Comments

[redcoast]

That's what I was saying. The Chinese may be cheating about the ages of the girl gymnasts, but the Americans are totally doping. Woo-hoo, cheating.

[bdunbar]

We may dope but we don't dope under age athletes.

* I thought steroids were illegal in baseball?

* Any abuse of steroids by baseball players (outside of whatever laws are broken doing so) should be a private matter 'tween Major League Baseball (tm) and the players. It's certainly not a matter for Congress to fret about.

[fpb]

By the same token, a bank defrauding someone is a private matter between the bank and the fraud victim. IN a professional environment, especially one that deals with lots of money, there is no such thing as private matters. Where I come from, there are laws against sporting fraud; and quite right too, since it is the police, not the sporting authorities, who tend to discover most frauds. Your attitude is quite simply a fraudster's charter.

[bdunbar]

You missed the parenthetical aside in my comment, I think.

If laws are broken, this is a matter for the state.

It is currently legal in the United States for a citizen to sell and obtain anabolic steroids, with a prescription. Possession is not punishable.

If an organization has rules prohibiting otherwise legal drugs - as Major League Baseball (TM) does, this is a private matter between the offender and that organization.

Where I come from .. Where I come from we don't feel that the government should be a big ol' honking intrusion in the lives of a free citizenry. Where I come from sports are a game. A lucrative one, sure, but a game. Where I come from the government has better things to do that hale baseball players up in front of the national legislature and grill them about their alleged drug use

[fpb]

Where I come from, we don't feel that a citizen, or rather a big ol' honkin' organization such as the Italian Olympic Committee or the Italian Football Federation, should be free to defraud the citizen in the name of liberty. And if you think they should, you've got a weird notion of liberty. Get two things clear. First, this is about money, and lots of it. Nobody dopes to win at kiddiewinks. And second, doping kills. Your poster girl for Olympic success through chemistry, Florence Joyner, died of a heart attack at 37, and she is hardly the only doper to end up badly and much before their time.

Scientific doping was invented by the East Germans in the seventies, and a whole generation of East German athletes, especially women, have had their lives ruined to this day - those who survived. I have seen their stories, and they are about as miserable as anything can be. Then, as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, American universities and athletics clubs went on a buying spree in East Germany, deliberately buying up all the