Bahrain stripped of only ever Olympic medal 18, November 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Bahrain.Tags: Bahrain Olympic medal, Cera, Olympic doping, Olympics, Rashid Ramzi
trackback
Bahrain have only ever won one medal at the Olympics. Or, rather, they had only ever won one medal. Now, thanks to the disqualification of their Gold Medal winning athlete Rashid Ramzi for doping, the small Gulf State are, once again, looking for their first ever Olympic success.
Ramzi, a Moroccan native, won the 1500m at the Beijing Olympics only to be found guilt of using Cera, a new and illegal blood-booster drug, according to the BBC. It is easy to presume that the pressures that went with his presumably multi-million dollar allegiance switch to Bahrain forced Ramzi to cheat to win. Wether this is the case or not is, of course, nearly impossible to tell. Though it does indeed pose as something of a cautionary tale for the Gulf States many of whom seek to buy in their talent as their population base is either so small or so lazy untrained that they can not attain world standards.
Personally, I think that if proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the athlete in question willfully, knowingly and deceitfully cheated then they should be financially ruined for life. I don’t so much care about the notion that they cheated: let’s all grow up somewhat. No, I just think of the poor athlete that worked for 4 years, 360+ days per year, however many hours per day, abstaining from countless luxuries and forcing themselves to eat nothing but rice and lettuce (or whatever is it they eat) only to come 4th in the Olympics, only for their placement to be bumped up to the podium 15 months later. No adulation, no roaring crowd, no fame, no raising of the flag, no teary glory, no affirmation of their life’s work and perhaps no funding next year; instead, all they get is a medal delivered by Fex-Ex.
Stories like this and those where athletes that miss out on glory by 0.002 of a second or .01 cm or something make me wonder how there aren’t more suicides in athletics.
Hat tip: Abstract JK
The Gulf blog 
Comments»
No comments yet — be the first.