As a child, the Olympics captivated my attention as a way to see worldwide competition. Some strange sports. The spectacle. The bringing together of families to watch. The national pride. But the specter of cheating has existed forever.
The 1972 Men's basketball team getting screwed. Competing against East German women with moustaches. Rigged gymanastic and skating judging. Our own massive doping situations in track and field. But doping I always thought was the only way to cheat in track. Looks like that isn't the case.
The linked article tells the story of how Russia cheated in several track events in 1980. An interesting read
Campbell Robbed? - (
New Window )
Ha, I've always thought the same thing!
Wasn't it the last winter Olympics where a curling squad was disqualified for using PED's? The only thing I could think of was getting high before a match.
Link - ( New Window )
I'm not surprised by that response.
Probably a big tad before your time but the Mexico City Olympics, when things were on a high simmer here (still four years before Kent State, Chicago), when Juan Carlos and Tommie Smith, silver and gold (or v.v.), took to the victory stand in the 400 (maybe the 200)m and did the silent, one fist raised to the sky while looking down. That presaged a lot of protest icons to come, some much later.
I too frothed at the mouth as the Games neared, and hearing John Williams' trumpet solo was thrilling, each day of the events, each commercial break, lol. Sometimes the Games were presented on TV on delayed broadcast because of the time zone difference. One that worked very well for us was Beijing, 2008, I think. The male Eastern Bloc doping athletes were notorious in the field events, discus, shot, javelin.
I was going to post that I'm old enough that I still always think of it as the Hop, Skip, and Jump. Glad to see I'm not alone.