Olympics

You may have noticed that the thirty second Olympic Games are reaching their conclusion in Tokyo, Japan. There's a lot that might be said about these games including discussion about whether or not they should have even gone ahead. 

Here on  the island of Britain, the BBC have always provided comprehensive Olympic coverage but this time round the International Olympic Committee have in their wisdom managed to severely reduce the number of hours of live screening available to our principal national broadcaster. These days it's becoming all about the money.

Olympians normally represent their countries but this year a team of native Russians are instead representing something called "The Russian Olympic Committee" or R.O.C.. You may recall that in 2019 the World Doping Agency banned Russia from all international sport.  Afterwards Russian appeals saw reduction of the punishment in a murky quagmire of compromise.

And so we arrive at the Tokyo Olympics. You must understand that Russia is not competing but all the athletes selected to represent the R.O.C. would have represented Russia. The arrangement stinks. Currently the R.O.C. have won sixty two medals including seventeen golds. It is not known how many R.O.C. competitors were involved in past doping programmes.

R.O.C. sports gear is styled in the red, white and blue colours of the Russian flag. It seems that the two main effects of The World Doping Agency ruling are that the Russian national anthem cannot be played at The Olympics and the Russian athletes must not say that they are competing for Russia - even though they obviously are.

What is this doing to stamp out national doping schemes? Privately, Vladimir Putin must be guffawing with delight... "Faster, Higher, Stronger and More Cunning".