LET'S BROADEN AND DEEPEN THE STRIP SHOW

I notice that the International Olympic Committee is reaching its relentless, unfettered arm as far back as 2000 to deprive junkie athletes – and anyone so unfortunate as to be teamed with them – of medals. As the guilty are mainly Americans, I naturally wonder about the objectivity, often questionable, of that Euro-centric group, but that’s another topic.

I don’t object to proven cheaters’ having their accolades stripped. Examples are Mr. Landis, of Tour de France in-fame, and the 1993 University of Alabama football team, the record of which was officially recorded by the NCAA as 1 – 12 - 0 after it was discovered they had failed to notice an ineligible player that participated the whole season. In fact, other proven cases of dishonesty still await penalties, as in the case of the Boston Patriots. (Thankfully the original Boston patriots were more honest.)

To return to the Olympics, though, I wonder why the long, muscular extremity of athletic rectitude has not stretched back to the DDR = GDR = German Democratic (ha ha) Republic (hee hee) = East Germany. For years the Olympian entries of that piss-ant puppet, 1/9 – GET THAT – ONE NINTH – the size of Texas were generally acknowledged to be as much pharmaceutical representatives as athletes. Some of their female sportspersons were frequently mistaken, from a distance and outside the locker room, for male sportspersons. When European Communism disintegrated the word was that the GDR’s chemical trainers had gone to work for China. Are all these records lost? No, there are always traces, tracks to follow, and some of the guilty might even be willing to tell the truth now.
Someone authoritative ought to demand that a new series of investigations focus on that bogus nation and, evidence supporting the conclusion, beginning denuding them of their badges of victory. I’m quite certain, too, that scrutinizing the stratagems of Russia and several others would be equally productive. No, we don’t want ex-post facto applications of new laws, but I suspect that what has changed most over the intervening years are detection methods, not drug usage. If we’re exhuming past crimes, there should be no limits on the ground we search or the depth we dig.