
Russian flag and national anthem banned from 2020 Olympics - stambros
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2019/12/09/breaking-news-russia-banned-from-2020-olympics
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kasperni
Icarus is a really good documentary about the Russian doping program. In won
the Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature in 2018.

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mc32
It’s rather interesting the whistleblower is married to one of the affected
athletes. They reached the decision that whistleblowing was the best option. I
believe they now live in the US due to fear of reprisal from back home.

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elmo2you
That's one perspective. Another one is that the person who is hailed a
whistleblower in the USA (Rodchenkov), may himself have quite a (highly
questionable, if not blatantly criminal) history of active involvement in
doping activities, and may have fled Russia because the net was already
closing up around him. This story could of course be all just a smear campaign
against the man. However, it's rather hard to tell, since verifiable info
appears hard to come by. Still, I'd rather not blindly believe the man on his
own word, considering what is known about him. I also did read somewhere (but
was unable to verify) that the RUSADA data that has been tempered with (the
reason for this WADA ruling), allegedly may have been modified from a US based
IP address, with a user account of a close associate of Rodchenkov (Migachev,
who also fled to the USA). Again, this could be all a smear campaign or damage
control. Still, I'd rather not judge either way, before knowing the actual
validity of these allegations. Lately, the USA sure does not have a very clean
slate themselves, where it comes to their involvement/corruption of supposedly
independent international organizations, aiming to pursue blatently anti-
Russian political policies.

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tinbad
This is exactly what the Russian government would want you to do with this:
question everything and everyone. You seem to at least admit that you were
unable to verify some outrageous claims that the US has planted evidence
against Russia. It has been proven time and time again that Russia doesn't shy
away from systematically cheating in major sport competitions. This entirely
adds up with my experience growing up there: status and perceived image have
always ranked higher than truthfulness or honesty in Russian culture.

Also, based on your comment history, I'm not necessarily doubting your
truthfulness but you do seem to be pushing a focussed agenda in your comments.

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elmo2you
Your response sounds fair enough to me. One small thing I would like to add to
it though. I'm actually not a fan of Russia (for a number of personal
reasons). But I equally dislike how the things you mentioned about Russia are
(in my opinion) also true in Europe and the USA. That is, at least on any
meaningful level of power/influence. It might be better hidden under a thick
layer of persistent cultural brainwashing, but that's about it for the
difference. You could even argue that the reason why people in Russia don't
even pretend to be honest, is because they already learned that they will get
away with everything anyway (something powerful people in the US and EU are
increasingly learning also, with increasingly blatant corrupt behaviour as a
consequence).

Sure, the Russian government will welcome any form of friction within the US
or EU, and probably will not hesitate to create it when they see a chance. But
there is no need for any Russian propaganda to seed such doubts, because the
US and EU do a marvellous job just on their own there.

Also, anyone who doesn't question the validity of something, once there
appears to be any discrepancy (even if that turns out to be a false alarm), is
either a blind believer or an idiot. The only agenda that I "push" is to
indeed question everything. After having witnessed first hand what some US and
EU based "humanitarian" organization do in other parts of the world, I think I
have very good reasons to be extremely sceptical about any expansion of their
"freedom and democracy".

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bitL
I am all for bans for crooked behavior, just please do it evenly - how about
famous asthmatic Norwegians, Carl Lewis vs Ben Johnson doping cases or Team
Sky in cycling? It just makes the whole decision politically-colored instead
of pure science/fairness-based. I find it weird when other national agencies
do some ugly workarounds as well but nobody bothers... Funny that even F1
driver Kvyat who lived since his childhood in Italy might be banned... It
resembles 1980/1984 Olympics-level idiocy.

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avmich
Could you provide here some links about similar behavior of other national
agencies?

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bitL
Norway is a glaring example, their winter Olympians consumed huge amount of
anti-asthma medication.

"Eyebrows were also raised when the Norwegian TV channel NRK published the
list of asthma drugs its country’s doctors were taking to this Winter
Olympics, which amounted to 10 times more than Finland’s."

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d1ffuz0r
Great, I hope we'll recover Sportakiada to counter this. Asia, Middle East,
Latin America will get fair treatment.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiad_of_the_Peoples_of_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiad_of_the_Peoples_of_the_USSR)

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Andrew_nenakhov
Russian here. I applaud this decision. We have a case when our government
officially sanctioned a doping tampering program and has tasked carrying it
out the very same organization that exists to prevent the use of doping.

Putin is a criminal and has a distorted worldview, that he is above all rules,
that all the world is as corrupt as he and his cronies are, that everything
can be bought, and if something goes wrong it's only because of it's a 'plot'
of his enemies. The cronies he appointed to all government posts too think
they are above all laws and rules, so, naturally, our sport officials are
doing what they always do: lie, cheat, bribe.

It's nice that for once this behavior has blown into their faces.

ALso, one more thing about olympics: russian olympic athletes are decidedly
NOT amateur athletes. They are all employed by the state, provided with very
luxurious scholarships and generally earn 8-10x the median russian salary.
Once they end their sports careers they usually join the corrupt russian
government, by either becoming members of the parliament via rigged elections
or by occupying various non-elected state posts.

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golergka
> 8-10x the median russian salary

That's not awfully high and probably less than most of HN readers can earn in
a first world country.

Completely agree with everything else though. Just pointing out the obvious.

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Andrew_nenakhov
Well, it's more than mid-level developers in top Russian tech companies like
Yandex are paid, and it's also way more than the income of any non-famous US
athlete from non-mainstream sports (runners, rowers, etc).

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user5994461
So what? Top athletes make money, it's not new. Olympics athletes are a few
select tens of people.

If you want a comparison, French athletes get 50k cash per medal if I remember
the numbers right.

Russia really want to win and show off internationally so no wonder they pay
their top athletes.

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bobthepanda
I mean, 50k cash for a medal you can only really get every four years is not a
whole lot of money.

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user5994461
It's only the bonus for the podium, they get other allowances of course.

Bear in mind that (winning) athletes usually get more than one medal. Think
swimming for example freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, in
different distances and in team relay. Lots of opportunities.

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Ancalagon
Unfortunate for the (clean) Russian athletes who won't be able to compete,
although I imagine most of them still will be able to assuming their data
wasn't tampered with. Its definitely a good move though.

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farisjarrah
The undoped ones will be able to compete, just not under an official Russian
team

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iamstartup
Strange. Why do sports interfere with politics?

The IOC wants to punish Russia and not the atletes, Why don't they allow for
or facilitate independent doping testing then and only rely on RUSADA?

Doesn't the flag and anthem belong to the people?

(I am getting down votes for having a different opinion, but the US flag
doesn't belong just to the Whitehouse administration either, right?)

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drspacemonkey
> The IOC wants to punish Russia and not the atletes, Why don't they allow for
> or facilitate independent doping testing then.

That's exactly what they're doing. The third sentence in the article:

    
    
        Russian athletes will be allowed to compete in major
        events only if they are not implicated in positive doping
        tests or if their data was not manipulated, according to 
        the WADA ruling.

