Paper Tigers of the Olympics
Once upon a time there was a joke about how the cunning lieutenant Rzhevsky visited a casino in Baden-Baden and brought home a lot of money from there, which was enough not only to pay off debts, but also to continue the rollicking life of a hussar. When the gentlemen officers asked the lieutenant how he managed to win so much, Rzhevsky explained: “Everyone there is a gentleman. And a gentleman takes a gentleman at his word. This is where the card hit me..."
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But such tricks take place only in Hollywood movies and in bearded jokes. If the legendary lieutenant in our time went to compete with Western gentlemen on parole, he would not only be left without pants and estates, but he would have to constantly check the presence of all the fingers on his hands. Because in our time, “gentlemen” have occupied almost all areas of international activity associated with prestige and fabulous profits.
The Olympic Games were no exception.
The international Olympic movement has seen everything: the boycott of the 80 Olympics in Moscow, the miserable 84 Olympics in Los Angeles (“even my grandmother can win a medal”), two first places for figure skaters in Salt Lake City, and many other tricks far from sports. . But the Rio Olympics, in terms of the number and sophistication of dirty tricks, will probably beat all previous ones.
The old motto “Oh, sport, you are the world” has long since outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced with the more honest “Oh, sport, you are loot and political leverage.”
Mass sports spectacles attract the attention of hundreds of millions of people around the world. And where there is mass interest, there is always big money circulating. And it becomes very annoying for sponsors and advertisers when the “wrong” athletes win Olympic medals. And where there is money, big politics is just a stone's throw away.
Of course, the “hero” of the Rio Olympics was the international anti-doping agency WADA, which did a huge amount of dirty preparatory work to clear the path for the “needed” athletes (primarily American) to the coveted Olympic medals in the most unsportsmanlike ways.
WADA has opened an unprecedented hunt for Russian Olympians on the eve of the opening of the 2016 Olympics. A number of Russian sports stars who had never been involved in a doping scandal were cleverly removed from competitions. First of all, the harmless drug mildronate (meldonium) was declared doping. Then, a dangerous precedent was created for the collective punishment of all Russian track and field athletes and their exclusion from participation in the Olympics. The culmination of everything was outright meanness - the exclusion of the entire Russian Paralympic team from participation in the Games.
In addition, WADA stirred up a doping scandal, which resulted in the recall of medals won by our Olympians years earlier. To give the matter a semblance of objectivity, two medals were withdrawn from athletes from other countries.
To further create resonance and discredit Russian athletes, a “public investigation” of documentary filmmaker Hajo Seppelt was organized with the screening of his film lampoon all over the world, and also, there was a sudden wave of “positive samples” from the Games in Beijing and London and complaints began to be feverishly considered - attention! – British anti-doping agency UKADA for obstructing activities on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Let’s not forget the contribution to the scandal, plus the direct damage to Russian sports from the “informants” - Rodchenkov’s defectors and the Stepanovs, whose “testimony” formed the basis of the accusation and was accepted without evidence as reinforced concrete.
On a number of points, WADA worked very clumsily. For example, accusing the FSB of replacing samples of Russian athletes through a hole in the wall directly during the Games. The evidence was allegedly provided by sample tubes scratched from the inside.
While punishing the right and wrong among Russian athletes, the IOC, sports federations and WADA, however, have no complaints against Western athletes who were previously convicted of doping. And Western athletes themselves are largely disappointed with the insufficient use of banhammers on Russian Olympians and the IOC’s admission of the Russian team to the Olympics.
By the way, WADA has already announced that mildronate will be legalized again immediately after the end of the Rio Olympics. It would seem, what do Western pharmaceutical companies have to do with it?
Against this background, the fruitful results of the American Olympic team are somehow not surprising, currently snatching 24 gold medals, of which only 4 are in “non-doping” events. The British team, which once had a very modest 3–4 gold medals for the Olympics, also made an incredible leap. But since WADA was created in 1999 (which, strangely enough, is run entirely by Commonwealth officials), Olympic medals have rained down on the British team. In Rio, the British won as many as 10 gold medals. And it's still a week before the closing ceremony.
However, the current Olympics have already set a kind of record. Various news agencies and sports commentators, choking with delight, reported that in Rio, among other Olympians, 44 homosexuals (11 men and 33 men) came to compete. And it was the USA and Great Britain that sent the most representatives of pink and blue. Hooray?
What about Russia? Even before the start of the Games, analysts from Goldman Sachs made a forecast for 4th place for our team, which should be surpassed by the teams of the USA, China and the sudden Olympic superpower Great Britain.
Our Olympians actually have to fight with their backs against the wall, in a reduced number, gnawing their way to each award. Their behavior, personal life, and the same tests are examined with close attention under a microscope. Two-time Olympic silver medalist Yulia Efimova compared the Olympics in Rio to a war. Thus, all the medals won by our Olympians in Rio can be safely considered awards of the highest standard.
And one should not hope that with the final of the 2016 Olympics everything will calm down, settle down and settle down. In two years, Russia will host the FIFA World Cup. What happened before the opening of the Games in Rio can be considered just a warm-up before serious battles, in which not only the RFU, but also the ubiquitous WADA, IOC, ASOIF and FIFA will be involved. And I would really like that this time the motto “we will not forget, we will not forgive” would become the lot of not only Elena Isinbayeva, but also a guide to decisive action by Russian sports and other officials.
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