1. If baseball hurt itself by not addressing the steroid issue, why is cycling still an olympic sport? They addressed the issue and failed.

2. If we are protecting the health of athletes, why are teenage anorexics allowed in diving? They wouldn't splash if they belly flopped off the platform.

3. Why is boxing still here? Anybody see the boxing on MSNBC? They showed a summation of all the scoring and referee issues that went wrong. It was a complete joke. Then one of the boxing officials complained of fights being fixed and he was suspended. The head of the amateur boxing federation responded by saying they scored at least 90% of the fights correctly.

As the guys on MSNBC said, "that means you got 26 fights wrong during the course of the olympics then. That's a sad joke."

How did cycling fail?

Well, even with the most rigorous testing program in professional sports, they continue to have problems.

Everyone thought last year would be a big improvement after the Landis fiasco. Instead, two of the Tour de France favorites were booted. This year the professional tour has lost 5 riders including 2 in the Tour de France. Yet another sponser, Barloworld, has pulled out not wanting their name associated with scandal.

It is obvious the riders are continuing to use high technology to try and stay one step ahead of the testing.

Aggident - I agree with you about cycling and baseball. The decision to axe baseball isn't about drugs. It's political. Cycling is more global than baseball and obviously not dominated by the USA, the Americas, or Asia.

At least cycling is aggressively testing and booting riders that are found to be doping. Baseball on the other hand seems content to pretend it doesn't happen and leave it up to a congressional investigation to air their dirty laundry. I love baseball, but man it's hard to stomach when I know guys aren't doing it on their own.

Which brings up the question, could we field a professional baseball team in the olympics or would the drug testing program make it problematic?


Boxing is the worst, it's just like legalized cheating. After the Roy Jones fiasco, I don't see why any talented American boxer would want to fight in the Olympics. Same is true for a lot of countries whose fighters have been robbed. Turn pro and make the money while you can.

As far as post-Roy Jones is concerned, I think the damage they did to the sport with the awful scoring system is much worse than the continued fight-fixing by the judges. The style that is rewarded by olympic scoring isn't really a style that prepares a fighter for a professional career. It encourages being extremely defensive while looking for one pitty-pat shot and then holding after you land your pitty-pat shot, and since body shots aren't ever counted by the judges in this system, no one ever goes to the body.

So between the screwy style it requires and the fixed fights, putting a quality amateur career together and making your name in the Olympics is no longer seen as the launching pad to a noteworthy professional career that it used to be.

[This message has been edited by Bob the Enzyte Guy (edited 8/26/2008 8:49a).]

quote:

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and since body shots aren't ever counted by the judges in this system, no one ever goes to the body.

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Not so fast my friend. As they showed on the MSNBC olympic boxing show, some fights body shots did count. Others they didn't.

You have three judges, and they have to hit their "punch" button within 1 second of each other to record a hit. Sounds to me that each referee must have his own set of rules.

Stupidly unorganized sport to the point of absurdity.

Sure, it happens occasionally because they should be scoring them according to the rules, but it is rare as hell. I watched about 8-10 rounds the other day, and don't recall seeing a single punch thrown to the body. Part of the issue is that many of the judges are too strict with what they consider a landed body shot, and what complicates it more is that they are easily screened from seeing it land (at least partially screened). So a tight interpretation of what they count + oftentimes 2-3 judges may be somewhat screened from clearly seeing it land = rarely counted. Rarely counted then leads to them being rarely thrown by most fighters.


[This message has been edited by Bob the Enzyte Guy (edited 8/26/2008 12:27p).]

It's funny that on the MSNBC coverage they showed the amateur boxing head giving a press conference before the olympics talking about how these were the best judges in the world and because of that there would be no controversies.

Then the press conference prior to the Gold medal round where he was getting defensive and made the stupid statement of "getting 90% of the fights right."

Post olympics.......I bet he wish he could crawl in a hole.