Lone distance runner
It looks like we are in for a slightly less interesting Olympic games this time – there will be less drugs and more limbs.
British athlete, Dwayne Chambers, has been told that he won’t be representing our country… which comes as no surprise since he was caught using performance enhancing drugs. He even went to court to appeal the decision not to include him. Apparently, by not taking him to China, the selection committee were impairing his livelihood – that’s like getting sacked from work because you turned up drunk only to argue that they are stopping you from earning money.
Indeed, despite the persistent and possibly fictitious rumours of mass doping in the Chinese team (possibly related to ‘Project 119‘), the Chinese authorities are cracking down hard on cheating. So far, two athletes in the last month have been denied a chance to compete because they chose to drink something a little more potent than coffee.
Alas, there’s also news that Oscar Pistorius will not be running… not because he cheated in any way, although some of his competitors did seem to view his lack of lower legs as such. Unfortunately he just wasn’t quick enough to qualify… by 1.75 seconds in the 400m. It’s a shame, I really think his participation would have raised some interesting questions about the future of the games.
And what is the future for the games?
I think eventually they will open a new class. We’ll have the Paralympics, the Standard Olympics and the Megalympics.
The Megalympics will be no-holds barred – ‘Athletes’ can take what they want and modify their body in any way they want. Sure, it won’t send the kids the right message, that hard work and training pay off… not like they do now, right? And in return we’ll get to see some of the fastest and strongest humans available at the time.
There will be swimmers with fins…
Here in Aus, to be an iconic football (not soccer) player, you need to take drugs. Coke and ectasy seem to get the most attention from the media.
And if you just happen to be a good footy player, your drug habit will make you immortal in the eyes of the fans.
As I don’t really understand sports, I don’t really understand why any one would cheat to win.
We have the same problem, mostly with cricket players, and tennis players… well, all ‘players’ really. that said, violence is more fashionable than drugs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7409943.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4BtZ0oWbYY
hahaha, dude, ive so thought that once when i was sitting on one of those things. it amazes me that people find those things fun. seriously. oh well.. no one will ever win that s**t. good strip
Thanks. I’m not a massive fan of fairgrounds in general… pointless thrills or potential death-traps… either way I’d rather not.
What’s the scariest ride you’ve been on?
Wow… I think the last time I heard the word “fairgrounds” used in American English, the context referred to a state fair or convention (like the World’s Fair) where there’s a lot of hay, pony rides, balloon animals, hot dogs, and other games common to amusement parks (but without most of the roller coasters).
I don’t like amusement parks.
“a lot of hay, pony rides, balloon animals, hot dogs, and other games common to amusement parks (but without most of the roller coasters)”
Yup, that sounds like most British amusement parks… I’m being harsh, Blackpool Pleasure Beach is pretty good, and Alton Towers, but for the most part we rely on mild thrills.
The Power Tower at Cedar Point is the only ride I refuse to get on again. There’s a picture of the ride here: http://www.cedarpoint.com/public/park/rides/thrill/power_tower/index.cfm
The seats are open air, on the exterior of a 300 foot tower you’re about to shoot up or down and the only thing between the rider and a very long drop to the pavement below is one of those plastic harnesses that comes down over your shoulders and buckles like a seatbelt between your legs. I like a little more insurance than that.
Actually, it turns out (and your very own BBC exposed this) that the doping tests are horribly ineffective. Its possible to manage doping so they won’t give a dead on hard positive and the Olympic folk are tired of being sued by every athlete who got nabbed on the first test but cleared on the second, so they’re afraid of “crying wolf”. As a result, some estimates put the number of people who will be doping at the games at about 60 percent (and that’s just the athletes!).
Quite a few of those, I’m sure, will be doing it with government help.
Makes me nostalgic for the good-old-bad-old days of the USSR vs USA. Men dressed as women, drugs all round… fun times.
60%… that’s high.
“60%… that’s high.”
Pun intended?
*checks to make sure no one was looking*
Always.
And there are false positives too… just because someone is convicted of cheating doesn’t mean they did. For instance, blood doping is one method of cheating in bike races: you take blood transfusions to increase your body’s oxygen-carrying capacity. And so if they ever find two blood types inside the same person, they convict him of blood doping.
Except, there are valid reasons for a person to have two blood types… for instance, it’s entirely possible you might have had a fraternal twin in the womb, that died as an embryo and your body absorbed some of it, and nobody would ever know until they tested your blood type. With 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies ending in miscarriage, and probably plenty more that end too early to notice, the chances of that are actually pretty high. But the blood doping test doesn’t take that into account at all. And that’s just one of the tests that are way too prone to false positives. So when someone is convicted of doping I always take it with a grain of salt.
Reminds me of false-positives in testing for the presence of blood or signs of arson at a crime scene.
“The Kastle-Meyer Color Test (in the catalytic color test category) is another investigative tool for the presence of blod. It relies on a solution of phenolphthalein on a piece of filter paper or a swab that has been rubbed on the suspected bloodstain. Then the investigator adds a drop of hydrogen peroxide. If the paper or swab picked up any blood, it turns bright pink. However, it also turns pink in the presence of potatoes and horseradish, so care must be taken at the scene.” (The Science of Cold Case Files book, 161).
Preservatives in carpeting & hardwood floors can skew test results for whether or not a fire was started with the use of accelerants (kerosene, gasoline, etc).
I for one would be more interested in the Megalympics than the regular Olympics.
Ordinary sports… yes, we all understand the basic idea, a little genetic luck and a lot of hard training = more muscle and more skill = beating the rest of the competition. But the Megalympics… that’s where you’d see some creativity.
I suppose it might turn out that for any given event there’s an optimum form of human being, and once that’s been found the competition returns to being boring. But hell, even if that happened it’d still be fun to watch the first few times.
I think I would too. Think of all the deliberately flared nostrils and bulging eyes!
The huffing and puffing and blowing down of houses.
I always liked the carousel. It wasn’t so much the being-on-it (which would be boring in and of itself), it was getting a full 360-degree view of the fair from eye-level.
I like the Tilt-A-Whirl, you get the exact same 360 view but you spin ten times faster.
you’re right, no finnish swimmers have ever won an
olympic medal. maybe this year will be different.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E1DE1F39F934A25754C0A960958260
Profound. Love this.
love your comic illustrations
Thanks