Sunday, September 11, 2016

Erasing Results, Not History

I saw an article today that celebrated the Belgian women's 4x100 meter relay team getting its gold medals from the Beijing Olympics the other day, eight years after the fact.  The reason is the exact one you might think.  The victorious Russians were stripped of their medals because one of their runners was found guilty of a doping violation, and the rules stipulate that if any member of a relay team is stripped of a medal, the entire team is.

In this day and age, all Olympic results might as well say "unofficial" even after the medals are handed out.  You can guarantee that plenty of results from Rio will be changed after the IOC conducts all of its tests and retests.  They save samples for eight years for the sole purpose of being able to test for drugs that they can't currently detect, but might with more sophisticated testing.  That's why we're only now talking about results from the 2008 Games being vacated and medals reallocated.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm glad they're catching the drug cheats and taking their medals away.  Especially those who deliberately do it and know their medals are frauds.  There's no place for that in the Olympics, or sports in general.  (None of which changes my stance that the Russian team belonged in Rio, by the way.)

Of course, those athletes that are belatedly given medals are the ones who really get cheated in these situations.  Instead of crossing the line first and celebrating being the Olympic champion in the moment, they have to watch someone else receive that false glory and only get their rightful title much later.  Instead of being given their gold medal during the Games in a packed stadium with the whole world watching, they have to settle for a personal ceremony far away from the Olympic arena with some friends and family and maybe a few TV cameras watching.

The national anthem is still played in their honor and they're still recognized as the Olympic champion, but it's definitely not the same.  That's perhaps the biggest thing that gets taken away from the athlete who was robbed of the greatest moment of their sporting life by a cheater.

"So what exactly is his point?," you may be wondering.  It's a fair question, especially because I'm going to sound like I'm contradicting myself.  Well, that's because doping is a complicated topic that lends itself to different opinions, even from the same person.  (For example, I fully support the idea of past dopers being allowed back in the Olympics once their suspensions are over, something American swimmer Lilly King clearly disagrees with.)

Well, my point is this.  I get the reason why they take away medals and change results, even if it is sometimes years after the fact.  But the whole idea of simply rewriting the history books and acting like what actually happened didn't is totally stupid.  Did Lance Armstrong NOT finish first in the Tour de France seven years in a row?  Travis Tygart may not think so, but there's mountains of video evidence that proves otherwise.  Likewise, did Barry Bonds NOT hit all of those home runs?  Goran Visnjic hasn't hopped in that time machine and changed history just yet (Timeless, coming to NBC Mondays this Fall).

It's just like when vacating wins as part of a program's penalties for an NCAA violation.  Memphis had to vacate wins for the season Derrick Rose was on the team, so apparently Kansas beat nobody in the 2008 National Championship Game.  And the thing I've always wondered about vacating wins is how come the losing team doesn't get to claim the win for themselves (just like Kansas beat nobody, they lost to nobody?).

Yes, that analogy is a stretch.  But I think you see my point.  When an Olympics end, people remember who won.  They remember seeing that person cross the line and celebrate their victory.  They don't remember who finished second.  Likewise, if that person eventually ascends to gold, they'll only remember that the original winner was stripped of their title.  Quick, who got the gold in the women's 200 in Sydney after Marion Jones had all of her medals taken away?  (The answer, which I had to look up, is Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas.)

There's been a lot of debate over the last few years over whether or not East German women should be retroactively disqualified because of the state-sponsored doping in that country in the 1970s and 80s.  That's a whole nother discussion, but the common consensus, which I agree with, is that no, they shouldn't.  Because what good will rewriting the results 40 years after the fact do anyway?

Eventually, none of it will matter.  When someone's introduced as an Olympic champion and shows off their gold medal, the only questions they're going to be asked (other than "Can I touch it?") are which Olympics and what event it's from.  But that doesn't change the fact that those Olympic champions were robbed of their rightful glory.  That's why so many athletes (especially recently) have felt cheated when they finished fourth behind a known doper.

They get their medal eventually, which is the good thing in all of this.  But reallocating medals and changing results doesn't change what actually happened.  Especially in this era where you can find the video of pretty much anything you want.  They may be the gold medalist, but they didn't cross the line first.  And that's sometimes the hardest thing to explain.

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