Steroids & Politics In Olympics

Regardless of the sport, it seems that several of Canadians are or have turned on or into the Rio 2016 Olympics. Why?

Either they don’t care about sport, the IOC or the problems connected with the Olympics, especially with the problems drugs have created that have come to be known as “Cheaters”.

This for the most part is great as it gives us a chance to see how Canada as a Nation competes with other Nations around the world in various sports.

Rio and placing the games there was not without controversy and many believe that the Olympics are only a way in which to “line the pockets” of those in charge and not so much to promote the Athlete.

Steroids are prevalent in various sports and while there was a ban for some Athletes this year in Rio, many say that the Olympics simply don’t go all that far. It is of course blatant that there are members of the public that will use steroids periodically if they wish to gain strength or muscle mass and therefore might look at anabolic steroids Canada providers or others available that you can find online.

Cheaters never prosper and eventually will and do get caught, but what about the “politics” in sports?

One question many ask is why pro athletes should be able to compete when the first Olympics were open to the general athlete of the day.

It should be understood that when Pierre de Coubertin formed the IOC in 1893 his intention was to have all athlete’s competing in the Olympics to be Amateur Athletes.

Amateur by definition is as follows:

Amateur sports are sports in which participants engage largely or entirely without remuneration, with the distinction being professional sporting individuals are financially remunerated for the time they spend either playing and/or training.

It wasn’t until 1988 that professional Athletes were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, leaving it up to the individual sports federations to decide if they would allow it or not.

Currently the only sports that claim to be “Amateur” are Boxing and Wrestling, which some might question, but over the years various scandals have been prevalent in the Olympics.

One such “scandal” involved Jim Thorpe in 1912, where he won numerous medals as he previously played semi-pro baseball in which he received small amounts of money for playing.

In light of this the IOC stripped him of track and field his medals and were eventually given back to him in 1983, some 30 years after his death. Thanks but no thanks!!

The whole idea of pure-amateur competition was rooted heavily in the aristocratic English public school.

The original intent was that amateur athletes not only didn’t play professionally, they didn’t exercise or train professionally — training was cheating.

It wasn’t until the 1970s, that idea was long since neglected and was considered to be somewhat an artefact of the English “class system”.

It’s believed that the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) was the fact that so many countries just flat out cheated. Eastern-bloc countries were notorious for skirting the edge of the rules by having state-sponsored “full time amateurs”.

Olympic athletes were given anything and everything they needed to live and train, but were theoretically “not paid” to do it, and all the money came from the government.

This put the Soviet countries at a distinct advantage over the privately-funded Western athletes for a long, long time.

In the long-run it was the IOC that decided that with the exception of pro athletes the games were less interesting, less competitive, and less fair.

Think what you want this was the start from Amateur sports to Olympic sports, pro athletes and sport known as “big business”.

It also helped that the Olympics were big business by that point, with television rights fees, sponsorship money and similar sources of income.

Having huge, marquee-level celebrity athletes brought in more money and in today’s world Olympic Athlete’s that win Gold, means more revenue from sponsor, TV appearances, which helps with endorsements for the Athlete, Coach or Club.

So being realistic – winning is everything!!