Russian flag and national anthem banned from 2020 Olympics | Hacker News Reader

Russian flag and national anthem banned from 2020 Olympics

thestar.com.my

89 pointsstambros32 comments

Icarus is a really good documentary about the Russian doping program. In won the Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature in 2018.

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.

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.

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.

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".

WADA is not an American organization. How does Canada figure into your conspiracy theory (literally, your theory about a conspiracy)?

1st: I do not claim a conspiracy. I just am rather sceptical when it comes to believing anyone with a potentially (if not likely) sketchy history, who all of a sudden grows a moral conscience that he or she apparently didn't require before. Especially if that somehow nicely aligns with the political agenda of powerful people in a country they seek refuge, from either prosecution or persecution elsewhere.

2nd: WADA might be situated in Canada, but that will not prevent the US from trying to influence (or even infiltrate) the organization. Either way, WADA has already received its share of criticism. I don't know enough to judge if that's information warfare against WADA, or if the organization has indeed become a US puppet as some do claim.

3rd: anyone who has been following this whole thing for a while, should also have noticed that some professional athletes from other countries appear to be getting an easier treatment than Russian ones. Could just be framing in the media, but could also be a real thing. I could honestly not tell. Still, when it comes to counting actual verified accounts of deliberate misinformation, I think that the US media is currently a lot more high on propaganda than Russian media (though neither are innocent, obviously).

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.

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

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."

The Olympics has F1 now?

F1 has an agreement with WADA. WADA != IOC.

https://old.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/e88dtr/does_the_r...

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...

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.

> 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.

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).

Yandex famously underpays compared to the market. I'd that 10x median (300-350) is certainly doable for a senior developer in Moscow – not easy, but certainly not undheard of.

Senior developers are not 'mid-level' I was referencing to. Of course, it's not unheard, but I estimate that maybe 1-2% of Russian developers break 300k rub/month. In Moscow most devs are paid less than 200k

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.

That's not 'medalists', it's everyone who gets on the national team. In any sport, even relatively obscure.

Top athletes that receive medals on international competitions get way more, in prizes, premiums, gifts like expensive cars/apartments/etc from federal and regional authorities.

So unless Western amateur athlete has some luxurious ad contract, he/she won't be even close to Russian 'amateurs'.

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

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.

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.

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

They’ll be able to compete on an individual basis under a neutral flag if they can prove they cannot have been part of this scandal.

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?)

> 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.

You're being downvoted because it seems you didn't bother reading it. This is the strongest action they can take. Both Russia and the implicated athletes should be punished.

The Olympics are a political event, not a sport event.

No, it's also a sport event.

Just like a sponsored article is an ad, but it's also an article. The cover is pretty good :D

> as punishment for state authorities tampering with a Moscow laboratory database

It was a state run program.

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