It seems on a daily basis that the whole notion of having a big sports event like the Olympics is just a folly. You now have the President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach warning that entire “national federations” or countries could be booted from some future Olympics because of doping. The United States Justice Department is investigating whether Russian athletes might have taking performance enhancing drugs while competing in events on American soil with help from either an American citizen or a non-American in drug masking schemes and whether the US banking system had money passed through which abetted doping schemes. Then there is the entire matter of what is going in on Brazil and no amount of whitewash from Comcast’s various divisions that will be presenting the Rio Olympics into homes and bars from NBC to CNBC can cover up what is becoming rapidly a total disaster.
Brazil is impeaching the country president, there are all sorts of funding problems along with what to do with the Zika Virus, and there is a question whether athletes are being pressured to go to Brazil by federations. There is pollution in the bay where some water events will take place. Russia has been suspended from Olympic competition and will remain on the sidelines until June 17 when the International Association of Athletic Federations will consider lifting the ban. The taxpayers funded World Anti-Doping Agency is preparing a report on doping during the 2014 Sochi Russia Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, the IOC may bar 31 athletes from Rio because those athletes tested positive for banned substances in the 2008 Summer Olympics. On top of that, French investigators are looking into the legitimacy of the bidding for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics. The easiest question to ask about the Olympics but the hardest answer to get is this notion. Is the IOC conning the public?
By Evan Weiner for The Politics of Sports Business.
This article was republished with permission from the original publisher, Evan Weiner