Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Empty Venues I imagine nothing is more dispiriting to Olympic athletes than competing in practically empty venues. Hell, even I find it dispiriting just watching on TV. Unfortunately, this has become a quadrennial farce. Ironically, it originated at Beijing 2008, when empty seats betrayed all of the hype China had propagated about national interest in those… Read more.
Doping I wrote only yesterday that I see no point in commenting any further on doping among Russian athletes. But then I woke up to this “breaking news” on CBS This Morning: [D]oping expert Thomas Hoberman, who is based at the University of Texas, believed the IOC chose not to ban the entire Russian team… Read more.
Swimming The entire aquatics venue greeted the Russian Men’s 4x100m Freestyle Relay team with resounding boos last night. International media have been saturated with reports about doping among Russian athletes in recent months. Therefore, the boos were hardly surprising, and Russian athletes must expect no less at this point. What was surprising, however, was watching Lilly… Read more.
Over the next 16 days, athletes will compete in 41 sports — from Archery to Wrestling. This is up from 32 in 2012. But am I the only one who fears diminishing returns? Nothing indicates this quite like so many top golfers snubbing their sport’s return to the Olympics after 112 years. I decried this in “Withdrawing from… Read more.
The technological wizardry, choreographed precision and sheer grandeur of everything on display during last night’s Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games kept me in such shock and awe that I was staring at the TV even during commercials. (“Opening Ceremony of Beijing Olympics,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 9, 2008) With all due respect… Read more.
On June 16, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published a damning report on state-sponsored doping among Russian Track and Field athletes. On June 18, a month ago today, I published “Track Officials Ban Russians from Rio Olympics for Doping,” in which I argued that athletes in other sports had to be doping too. ______________________ I suspect… Read more.
Last November, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published a report, which found that Russia perpetrated state-sponsored doping to enhance the performance of Track and Field athletes. It made two major recommendations: The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the sport’s governing body, should suspend all Russian athletes from international competition. The Russian Athletic Federation (RusAF)… Read more.
Media alarms about Zika make it easy to overlook persistent concerns about Brazil’s sewage-infested bays and lagoons, which expose locals, and will expose Olympic athletes, to MRSA and all kinds of other waterborne viruses. (“Zika Virus: God Help the Children; Save the Olympics,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 3, 2016) The stress of training for the… Read more.
