Doping in the Olympics
Doping is illegal because it forces athletes to do things dangerous to their health in order to compete. The Olympics is about the best that a human body can be, not about how we can make ourselves into mutants to go faster or stronger.
There’s something vaguely grotesque, vaguely gladiatorial about a sports contest in which we are aware the participants have traded off their health and years of their lives to be where they are.
I have been following the shot putter Valerie Adams of New Zealand primarily because she is a Mormon, making her interesting to me. She got silver.
Now she has gold. Turns out the gal from Belarus was doping. (And, frankly, if they caught it this quickly, doping crudely.)
As she states in the article, while she has gold now, the gold she legitimately earned, she was deprived of her chance to stand on the podium and have her moment, and let New Zealand have its moment. Still, I hope she gets a nice frame for this one, to put next to the one she got in Beijing.
Update: Holy Mackerel, look at those arms. This is not a woman to be messed with.
