Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Russian skater Valieva cleared for Olympics after doping charges | DW News" video.

  1. They lost it a long time ago. I'm Australian and had a scholarship for swimming to an American college. An American girl I trained with for 2 summers was cheated out of a gold at the 92 Summer Olympics where the Chinese suddenly appeared with all these Amazonian girls and only the 1 male swimmer. It reeked of the former East German program. Nobody at first could figure out what was going on because there was lots of testing but no positive tests. Then one of the Australian coaches whose swimmer finished 3rd behind 2 Chinese complained that his swimmer was tested but the Chinese weren't. FINA said "NO its just Random chance." Then people started looking at the list of those tested and found that it was mainly Australian's, American's and Brits the 3 nations that tested ALL their swimmers at their pre-Olympic trials. But they only counted for about 1/2 to 2/3 of the list. The list was scattered with swimmers from all over the world. The only suspicious thing was that NO Chinese were tested, but then a few other countries had nobody tested as well. Then one of the British coaches asked one of his swimmers to look at the list. I was at the U. of Illinois and had competed against these Brits who were at Iowa in the same conference. This British swimmer pointed out that many of these other swimmers from other countries were also attending American universities. You see in the NCAA they had begun testing EVERY athlete back in 1986/87. I know that for a fact because I was there and was tested as part of that program. What the officials did in Barcelona was pick swimmers who were Australian, American, British or were at college in America. That way they knew they wouldn't get any positive tests, it would look random and they would avoid any scandals.
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  2.  @mikestrohm3271  Yeah its something that has never been widely told, but those of us who know are still angry. I was never at that level to go to an Olympics (my best was 5th at trials) but I knew people who did and some were cheated. It irks me because I know how hard they worked. Luckily that girl I knew did get a gold in a relay.
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  3.  @annecohen8927  The problem with drugs in sport is how the various international sports organizations have been more interested in avoiding scandals rather than having clean sports. I was a swimmer and FINA were terrible back in the 90s. They simple didn't test swimmers from suspect countries. Track and field has been even worse. There was the Ben Johnson scandal at the Seoul Olympics. Within 2 years most of the men who ran in the 1988 final had also been caught. There's an amazing documentary about it and Johnson is totally open about how bad athletics was at the time. It was never cleaned up in athletics which lead to the Sydney Olympics scandal with Marion Jones. It was never cleaned up in cycling even after a couple of riders died from PE drugs. Not until the Lance Armstrong scandal. So long as there is the money and/or National prestige associated with sports there will be cheating.
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