"After high-profile doping offenses by Irish riders at both the 2004 and ’08 Olympic Games, Horse Sport Ireland officials embarked on a massive campaign to eliminate such infractions from Irish sport. In 2004, Irish rider Cian O’Connor won individual show jumping gold but had the medal revoked when his horse Waterford Crystal tested positive for prohibited substances. There was a scandal when the horse’s B sample was stolen before it could be tested, but in June 2005, the FEI stripped O’Connor of his medal and disqualified the Irish team, which had placed seventh, from the ’04 Olympic Games."
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You couldn't make this stuff up.
Stolen horse-pee!
About as unlikely as cup-peeing fairies
Or here(drug user racehorses)
My feelings about cheating in sport are pretty rigid.
Get caught just once and that should be the end of your career.
Either that, or as one wag suggested, have a third, cheat's Olympics:
- The Olympic Games (No cheating allowed)
- The Paralympics, (where it's kinda hard to figure out how to compare different handicaps)
- The Everything Goes, Doping, Cheating, Backstabbing Wacky-Races Olympics.
Like strewing chocolates in front of half-starved gymnasts, for instance.
The Everything Goes Olympics would no doubt have a fair number of competitors dying from the overindulgence in bath-salts, or whatever, but we could have a special extra section for morticians, and taxidermists, to collect those whose bodies couldn't take the increased stresses.
Extra
It seems Oscar Pistorius will be running in the Olympics, not the Paralympics, on his carbon-fibre prosthetic blades. I'm overawed at what he's done, to be a world class athlete, but I don't think this should be happening. Different studies disagree as to whether his blades are an enhancement or a handicap. However you look at them, they're a significant disparity.
Yes, have a race with blades versus feet, but recognise you're not playing like against like.
I say: let them do what they will and advertise it.
ReplyDelete"Better living through chemistry"
I agree with the blades vs feet statement, as well as the admiration statement.
DeleteHey! Not just chemistry, surgery, cloning, transplanted cheetah organs, steam-powered limbs, let it all hang out!
DeleteAnd as for equality..... equivalency of all costumes in the "straight" olympics. If one brand of running shoes gives an advantage over another, lets go barefoot. Swim costumes with sharkskin grooving? Then swim naked....
DeleteJust wait until I get around to rules for the beach volleyball.
I guess you don't appreciate the Tour de France...
ReplyDeleteAh, Rob from Amersfoort, I do so appreciate the Tour de France, where the perfidy of sportsmen oft reaches its peak. People pushing each other off bikes, into walls...
Deletekicking and punching in the peloton. Good ol' Lance, pumped full of chemical goodness, I love the tour....
Well, I do so long as it's full of misbehaviour.
It's so much more fun than sport where people follow the rules.
I've never been to Amersfoort, but I was in Utrecht once, back in about 1980. Passing through, in winter. Hired a bike for a day. froze my fingers off.
And I've flown into Schiphol a few times. I love the views, flying in over the coastal dunes, then those straight lines of farming, little tiny perfect houses like the ones I had on my model railway as a kid... Then you see people, tractors, boats, cows in fields, and all too soon you're rushing along the runway to an anticlimax. Schiphol is the only airport I can think of where you can chill by gazing at old masters paintings in a tiny art museum. Or get a book to read in the airport library. Nice!
I like your blog.
Thank you. I'm glad you liked the Schiphol experience. Utrecht is a nice town, it nearly escaped destruction by our German neighbours when they wanted to bomb another city after Rotterdam ...
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