The Olympic Legacy of Disgrace

With the news of the Chinese gymnastics team possible cheating during the Olympics one wonders how great the IOC (International Olympic Committee) really is. This current claim that cheating has gone on is not the first and will likely not be the last. Cheating has been going on for along time in the Olympics and the IOC has done little to stop it. Let us look at the history of cheating in the Olympics and what can be done to stop it.

One of the most obvious examples and most talked about is the Russia US men’s basketball gold medal game. There is no question that the referees who were from Soviet bloc countries though not the USSR were making up rules to favor the USSR. For instance in the end when the USSR had lost the game they added time on to the clock and gave possession of the ball to the USSR because they claimed a member of the USSR team fouled and American. They rules at the time do not allow them to add time nor should possession been given to the Soviets. That extra time and possession gave the Soviets the chance to win the game, which had already ended in there, lose. The referees that favored the Soviets made other obvious errors. No attempt was made at following the rules but new rules were made up on the spot to help the USSR. The US team in protest did not attend the medal ceremony.

The Soviets loved to cheat and it even becomes obvious when you notice that they were once a dominant Olympic contender in most sports but they have now fallen from the height of there Olympic power. While doping was done by about all Soviet teams and we now have actual evidence and people who have admitted to cheating for the East German and Russian teams using drugs to hide the drugs the athletes were given. In fact many female Olympians during the doping era of communist teams are suffering from many problems while the men have had little negative effect. When you look back on the fact that the US Men’s hockey team played not amateurs but professionals (lest face it military men who’s only training is Hockey and are paid well for it are professionals) who were on steroids it is truly a miracle they were beat.

The soviets did not only use steroids to cheat but they cheated by any means possible. One way that Soviets as well as most other countries except the US would cheat is by having amateurs with government jobs like postal workers who never did there jobs but trained. This was at a time when all the events were for amateurs. Because no one really was amateur the IOC did one of the only fair things in its history and allowed professionals in most sports. The Soviets would use other means to cheat such as when they were caught cheating in fencing by using electronic equipment to register near hits instead of having to make an actual hit. Fortunately this was discovered.

Asian teams also love to cheat such as during the Korean Games when the US Taekwon Do champ was told that the Korean he had beat by throwing out of the ring was not in fact thrown out contrary to what the cameras kept showing repeatedly. China has taken over as the cheating communist country. In the last few Olympics the Chinese have been caught doping more then anyone with some years when they were caught doping more then the rest of the world combined. China isn’t as good at cheating as the Russia was.

What is sad is that the US has much lower history of cheating or getting caught at the least and still is the best. Most issues with the US are examples of our snowboarding who was stripped of his medal in Nagano for having used Pot, which is not really a performance enhancing substance. The US is the team that suffers the most from cheaters. While cheaters come and go such as the USSR the US remains the best capable of beating teams without having to cheat.

The IOC seems to only care about money. What the IOC should do is to have one big ceremony where all players who lost to teams which eventually were found to have cheated to given the medals they deserve if they got silver give them a gold if they missed a bronze give them the bronze, and they should put asterisk by the historical records showing that they cheated and show the fourth place finishers for those who were denied bronze medals so the world will know who really got what. The IOC has plenty of money, countries fight hard and spend fortunes making sure they host Olympic events they can easily afford to give the medals to those who deserved them.