On Fri, 08 Sep 2000 19:01:41 +0200, you wrote:
I do remember some Europeans asking what
was true about American athletes not being tested because of 'lack of
money' (true or not, it is a popular story overhere) - which would make
accusations of the Chinese a bit akward.
That might be true of some of the smaller sports in the
United States, but I don't think lack of money has been that
much of an issue in the major Olympic sports such as swimming
and track field athletics.
However there was a story last week about swimming, where the
responsibility for drug testing got handed over from U.S. Swimming
FINA to the new independent doping agency back in January, and
the new agency apparently has some organizational 'teething'
problems in getting the ball rolling, so practically no swimmers
had been tested since January before arriving in Australia.
The swimmers were actually complaining that the lack of any
tests was making it look like there is some kind of coverup/
conspiracy or something, and their tests had actually decreased
this year instead of increasing because it's an Olympic year.
They implied that they WANTED to be tested and couldn't get
anybody to come test them.
Oliver Stone followers will point to this as sure evidence of
coverup at the highest levels; the rest of us will point to
beaurocratic snafus typically associated with reorganizations and
responsibility handovers.
The Europeans, being separated by an ocean, will suspect 'Big
Brother' U.S. of deceipt.
Just because a nation is big and has plenty of money doesn't
mean that everything works smoothly, as advertised, and like
clockwork. We'll leave that to the Swiss.
RT
