johnola
Jermaine Jenas
One political body. Question why is it France, Spain Germany and the like and not the EU?
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Lost Mango
Pascal Chimbonda
I assume this is tongue in cheek?
Wales isn't a country and hasn't been since 1200s. And despite what the Brexit gammons spouted all these other countries retain their individual sovereignty.
Jurgen the German
Erik Thorstvedt
Wait you mean the 100m final at this Olympics? Not seen anything about any of the runners being cheats. I think it’s been a great Olympics personally even if GB haven’t won as many golds as we have at previous games.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
It's been great! Lots of incredible athletes, fantastic moments, disappointment, great venues etc. Everything you want from top level sports.
Lost Mango
Pascal Chimbonda
The Ben Johnson one in '88.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
We're 7th if you rank medals by population.
Glenda's Legs
Paul Walsh
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed what I’ve seen of it. But then I love the Olympics as it’s the only time I ever watch so many different sports.
In 2004 I was off work for several months with a prolapsed disc. The worst pain imaginable. Friends gave me dvd films to watch but I couldn’t concentrate on anything, film or tv, due to the pain. Days were so long, counting hours between one dose of painkillers to the next. Then the Athens Olympics started and I swear it saved my sanity. Loved it as an event since then and then 2012 was brilliant, especially as being a 30 min train ride away we managed to get to a lot of events.
I’m sure there are still pockets of cheating that go on but it is still a great spectacle of sporting prowess and achievement.
In 2004 I was off work for several months with a prolapsed disc. The worst pain imaginable. Friends gave me dvd films to watch but I couldn’t concentrate on anything, film or tv, due to the pain. Days were so long, counting hours between one dose of painkillers to the next. Then the Athens Olympics started and I swear it saved my sanity. Loved it as an event since then and then 2012 was brilliant, especially as being a 30 min train ride away we managed to get to a lot of events.
I’m sure there are still pockets of cheating that go on but it is still a great spectacle of sporting prowess and achievement.
RunTMC
Steven Caulker
Now this is the stuff we love.....'dude roles into town with a gun'......
Who is the Olympic shooting sensation taking the internet by storm?
With his run-of-the-mill prescription glasses and nonchalant pose, Turkish Olympic shooter and Paris 2024 silver medalist Yusuf Dikeç has been propelled to viral stardom.www.euronews.com
Just going back to this post in case you missed it. Turkey sent a guy to the Olympics shooting event with no additional equipment (no specialised visor to reduce blurring, no single eye obscuring to increase precision, and no headphones to reduce ambient distraction although he did have small earbuds). This picture post on X shows him with his hand in his pocket with nothing but his prescription glasses casually shooting his pistol on the way to a silver medal. This picture has gone viral having been viewed more than 200 million times on X. And now a whole bunch of Olympic medallist have been replicating that pose as part of their celebrations.
It made me wonder when it would cross over to football. And I recently saw an Ajax player do it. Now I don’t watch a lot of football outside of Tottenham but I was curious to know whether it would expand into the Premier League. So for all of you out there, if you see someone with a celebration of hand in their pocket firing a pistol, just remember the name Yusuf Dikec, a middle aged 51 year-old Turkish shooter who rocked up to the Olympics and took the internet world by storm.
Gilzeantoscore
Justin Edinburgh
Seoul Men's 100 meter final. All of the finalists were found to be drug cheats. Carl Lewis will claim he was not found guilty, but that was only because the US authorities did funny buggers with his sample. They're all on the juice so its all a bit of perfection as far as I am concerned.
glasgowspur
Luka Modric
Lewis has all but been wiped from the history books, once the poster boy, now barely acknowledged.
The USA are very quick to point at the eastern European countries doping, never any mention of that almost all of their stars from that time have since been if caught red handed have had very spurious claims of innocence.
johnola
Jermaine Jenas
Marion Jones too. Cheated for years.
johnola
Jermaine Jenas
I was being tongue in cheek as nobody wants that apart from a few statesmen.
In a stable EU we are more likely to see the breakdown of those states back down into principalities and what not.
Why have a Germany troubled with so much guilt when you could have a romantic collection of Prussians, Saxons and Wurttembundians.
All competing under their own historic flags.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
????
Since when was Lewis wiped from the history books? There were 3 tests that showed traces of ephedrine in very low concentrations, but the levels where less than half of what would be counted as a positive test TODAY! And the substance was available over the counter in various weight reduction pills, and the levels found in the test were consistent of taking such products.
glasgowspur
Luka Modric
The same drugs tests that lance Armstrong continually passed, the ones that seldom caught the Eastern Europeans, those drug tests?
Armstrong never failed a test, most of the GDR never failed tests, it was whistle blowers and the release of documents after the fall of Wall that convicted them.
When conversations about Olympic greats are held Lewis often hazed over, even the American athletics body have admitted that there were irregularities in that period.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
Random testing wasn't introduced until 1988. The Armstrong case is totally different, as that was a cover up operation and extortion on an unpresidented level.
What went on before 1988, we can only speculate. There was definitely PED involved in that time, in both East and West. Some records still stand (unfortunately), and no one is even close to beating them.
That doesn't mean everyone cheated, and it also doesn't mean Lewis didn't. There isn't any evidence, and no one has come forward with any information.
I have my suspicions of course, as USA's record isn't great, but Lewis isn't deleted from the history books.
Jurgen the German
Erik Thorstvedt
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting: Boxing eligibility row key questions
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting each won gold in boxing at Paris 2024 - but the row over their eligibility looks set to continue.
www.bbc.co.uk
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting each won gold in boxing at Paris 2024 amid a global furore of whether they were eligible to compete in the women's division.
The controversy overshadowed the boxing and, at times, dominated coverage of the Games around the world.
At the closing ceremony on Sunday the boxers will be centre stage again. They have each been announced as flag bearers for their countries - Khelif for Algeria and Lin for Chinese Taipei.
But the end of the Olympics does not mark the closure of this issue as sport is left facing some key questions...
How were the fighters able to win gold in the Olympics but not the World Championships?
The World Championships were run by the Russian-led International Boxing Association (IBA), which disqualified the two fighters for reportedly failing what it called "eligibility criteria" following "gender testing" as a result of "many complaints from several coaches".The IBA says blood testing on the two fighters was conducted in May 2022 and March 2023, and that the results “conclusively indicated" that the pair “didn’t match the eligibility criteria for IBA women's events".
Since then they have claimed that male XY chromosomes were found in both cases. IBA President Umar Kremlev also said that the tests "show they were men".
Lin did not appeal the decision, while Khelif did take her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), but then withdrew the appeal.
However, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended the IBA in 2019 amid integrity and governance issues, and then stripped it of its official status last year over a failure to make reforms. The IBA also contravened IOC guidance by allowing Russian competitors at its world championships.
This dispute meant the IOC was responsible for running the boxing competition at the Paris Olympics, as it was in Tokyo. It applies less stringent eligibility criteria.
Despite being informed of the IBA's test results last year, the IOC has always recognised the boxers as female athletes, insisting that because they were born and raised as women, and are registered as women in their passports, they are eligible for women's competition under their rules.
Others argue that how someone is registered is not proof of their sex.
However, the IOC has also questioned the legitimacy and timing of the IBA's tests, making the point that the boxers fought for years without being tested. It also questioned the IBA's credibility, pointing to a chaotic press conference held in Paris, which featured several inconsistencies, as evidence that their test results cannot be relied upon.
Will Olympic boxing change its eligibility rules?
In 2021, the IOC issued new guidance, asking individual sports federations to develop eligibility policies of their own, rather than insisting on a blanket policy based on testosterone levels.However, with the IOC currently in charge of Olympic boxing due to the dispute with the IBA, and as the controversy around Khelif and Lin has erupted, it has faced mounting pressure to come up with stricter rules of its own to protect the women's category, and ensure fairness and safety.
This is especially the case after a number of sports federations have toughened up their own sex eligibility regulations in recent years, banning transgender women from elite female competition, and insisting that athletes with differences in sex development (DSD) medically lower their testosterone levels.
There is no suggestion that Khelif and Lin are transgender.
The IOC's eligibility rules for boxing therefore have not kept pace with other sports. The IOC abandoned genetic gender testing in 1999 and seems opposed to changing the rules, partly for fear of stigmatising people, saying that "every person has the right to practise sport without discrimination".
IOC President Thomas Bach said: "It is not as easy as some may now want to portray it - that XX or XY is the clear distinction between men and women. This is scientifically not true anymore."
However, Bach also said: "If somebody is presenting us a scientifically solid system - how to identify man and woman - we're the first ones to do it. We do not like this uncertainty. So, we would be more than pleased to look into it."
An IOC spokesman has also said that this "is not a black and white issue"
They added: "There are many women with higher testosterone levels than men so the idea that a test is some kind of magic bullet is not true. This is a minefield. If we can find a consensus we will certainly work to apply that. This is a question in all sports, we are open to listen to anyone with a solution to that question. The IOC is always trying to balance inclusivity and fairness, to put it more broadly, also safety. That is a difficult one and something we will have to look at."
The IOC's critics argue that achieving such a balance is impossible, and that fairness and safety must be prioritised.
The boxing controversy has fuelled demands for mandatory sex testing at future Olympics, with campaigners calling for the return of a cheek swab test (which the IOC moved away from in 2000). They say that the vast majority of female athletes are in favour of this. However, others have argued that more comprehensive testing is required to be sure about an individual-s genetic makeup, which would raise concerns over cost and invasiveness.
Will Khelif and Yu-ting be eligible to compete in their next non-Olympic competition?
Until an alternative is established, the IBA will remain as the de facto world governing body of the amateur sport. In which case Lin and Khelif will not be able to fight in its events. But with several countries boycotting IBA events, the sport is under pressure to establish a new governing body. In fact the IOC recently said "we desperately need a federation to run boxing", and has urged national boxing bodies to create one, or risk the sport missing out on the Olympics in four years' time.A new organisation called World Boxing was launched in 2023 and currently has 37 members, still far fewer than the IBA, but is not recognised by the IOC.
As it stands, the IOC will continue to organise Olympic qualifying events which Khelif and Yu-ting can be a part off.
Across sport as a whole, is there a wider issue with DSD athletes in women's sport?
We do not know if Khelif and Lin are athletes with DSD because the full results of the tests are confidential, and the fighters are yet to declare them. They and their supporters insist they are female.However, because of what the IBA has claimed (and an IOC mistake when it initially said that this was not a DSD case, before having to retract the statement), this has inevitably led to speculation that they could be DSD athletes, and has renewed debate over how sports should approach the issue.
It has been especially relevant to athletics, in which South African middle distance runner Caster Semenya - who was born with DSD condition 46 XY 5-ARD - twice won Olympic 800m gold. At Rio 2016, all three medallists in the women's 800m were DSD athletes, including the winner Semenya.
Several top sprinters have also been affected by the sport’s restrictions on DSD athletes, which now cover all track and field events in the female category. Namibia's Christine Mboma, who 200m silver in Tokyo, and compatriot Beatrice Masilingi have both been affected by the rule change. They along with 11 others had to miss the World Championships in Budapest last year under the new rules requiring DSD athletes competing in previously unrestricted events to suppress their testosterone levels for at least six months before returning to competition.
World Athletics has claimed that while "approximately 1 in 20,000 of the general population have a 46 XY DSD, in elite women's competition, the proportion is approximately 7 in 1,000 - a prevalence that is 140 times higher". It argued that "this is strong evidence of a performance advantage".
However, even within the scientific community there is debate over what physiological advantage DSD athletes actually have, depending on the type of DSD. Some say it is impossible to establish that everyone with a Y chromosome is a male and everyone without a Y chromosome is a female, and that more data is needed.
What action have individual sports taken in regards to competitors with DSD?
World Athletics is one of a number of sports federations that have toughened up rules relating to the eligibility of transgender and DSD athletes in the women's category.In 2018 it said DSD athletes could not participate in any women's event between 400m and one mile - unless they lower their high testosterone levels, which it claimed gives them an unfair advantage because it can boost endurance and muscle mass. It said the rules were needed "to ensure fair and meaningful competition within the female classification". Athletes could reduce their levels by taking specific drugs.
Kandi1977
Garth Crooks
Not less stringent. Transparent, unlike that corrupt Russian IBA, who have provided the square root of feck all evidence of those tests.
Jurgen the German
Erik Thorstvedt
I think it’s quite telling that both athletes didn’t appeal the decision to ban them. Well Khelif did and then withdrew the appeal. They need to find a replacement to the IBA as the IOC are cowards and prioritise inclusion above everything else.
Personally I've really enjoyed it, lots of close finals and a few surprises.